Opinion by
Paul Waldman
Columnist
May 6, 2021 at 12:06 p.m. CDT
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is not a subtle man. He’s happy to explain to you exactly what his sinister schemes are and how they work. So it was no surprise that when asked about the current ferment among House Republicans, McConnell did not give the standard I’m just working hard for the American people reply.
Instead, McConnell said: “One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.”
McConnell does not waste time on the pretense that bipartisanship can be had if Democrats and Republicans come together in good faith, or that at heart everyone wants the same things. His job as he sees it is to hamstring, thwart and defeat President Biden at every turn.
But McConnell’s ability to accomplish this goal depends on a group of people whose actions, both past and future, are widely misunderstood: the moderates in his caucus.
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One might even go so far as to say that people in Washington, D.C., are deluded about who those moderates are and how they’ll act. Because the truth is, McConnell has the likes of Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska firmly in his pocket. He’s counting on their help to kill Biden’s infrastructure and jobs packages. And he’s going to get it.
It’s not that the moderates don’t consider themselves to be independent thinkers, and don’t make occasional efforts to work with Democrats. But when it counts, they do what McConnell wants.
We’ve been through this routine so many times it’s remarkable that there are still people who don’t understand how it works. The moderates string Democrats along for as long as possible, assuring everyone that they really, really want to be bipartisan. They express deep concern about the extremists in their own party. They pine, visibly and painfully, for the days when members of both parties routinely crossed the aisle. Then they vote with McConnell.
That has been the pattern on every remotely controversial piece of legislation in recent years. In 2009 and 2010 the GOP moderates negotiated endlessly with Democrats over the Affordable Care Act — then every last one of them voted against it. How many moderates objected when McConnell held open a Supreme Court seat for nearly a year to deprive President Barack Obama of the ability to fill it? Zero.
In 2017 McConnell and President Donald Trump giddily passed tax cuts gift-wrapped for the wealthy and corporations — and every moderate voted for it. Every one of them voted against the American Rescue Plan earlier this year, not because it was so drastically different from the pandemic relief bills passed in 2020, but because this time a Democrat president would reap the political benefit.
The only time in recent history that a few moderate Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to do something meaningful that seemed to contradict McConnell’s wishes was when three of them voted against their party’s misconceived 2017 attempt to repeal the ACA — and that was the exception that proves the rule.
That’s because when Collins, Murkowski and John McCain (R-Ariz.) deprived the GOP of the 50 votes it needed, they were doing McConnell and the GOP a favor. Throwing roughly 20 million Americans off health coverage and rewriting the rules of the whole system would have been so cataclysmic that any smart Republican knew it would be a nightmare for the party. Instead, they showed the base that they were making an effort but didn’t have to suffer the consequences had they succeeded.
So the only time a few moderate Republicans appeared to be rebelling against McConnell, they actually weren’t.
And yet some people still hope that next time, the moderates might say no to McConnell and join with Democrats to provide a victory for Biden. When conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), a desperate defender of the filibuster, was pressed on McConnell’s comment about stopping Biden, he brushed it off.
“That’s one person,” Manchin said Wednesday, adding that “I can assure you” that “there are Republicans working with Democrats” to “make something happen” on infrastructure.
Manchin is right about the short term, and spectacularly wrong about the medium and long term. Yes, he’s talking to Republican colleagues about infrastructure. But just as they did on the American Rescue Plan and on Obamacare, they will negotiate with him and then vote against the bill.
They have two different incentives, and they’ve figured out how to satisfy both. On one hand, they want their constituents (many of whom are not Republicans) to see them as independent and reasonable — so they make a show of talking to Democrats as the legislative process proceeds.
On the other, it’s in their interest for Biden to fail, since that helps every Republican. So there’s no way they’ll give Democrats votes to pass the bill, which is why Democrats will need to pass it with the simple-majority reconciliation process.
Just after saying he was 100 percent focused on opposing Biden, McConnell added, “What we have in the United States Senate is total unity from Susan Collins to Ted Cruz in opposition to what the new Biden administration is trying to do to this country.” Don’t doubt it for a moment.
Paul Waldman
Columnist
May 6, 2021 at 12:06 p.m. CDT
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is not a subtle man. He’s happy to explain to you exactly what his sinister schemes are and how they work. So it was no surprise that when asked about the current ferment among House Republicans, McConnell did not give the standard I’m just working hard for the American people reply.
Instead, McConnell said: “One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.”
McConnell does not waste time on the pretense that bipartisanship can be had if Democrats and Republicans come together in good faith, or that at heart everyone wants the same things. His job as he sees it is to hamstring, thwart and defeat President Biden at every turn.
But McConnell’s ability to accomplish this goal depends on a group of people whose actions, both past and future, are widely misunderstood: the moderates in his caucus.
ADVERTISING
One might even go so far as to say that people in Washington, D.C., are deluded about who those moderates are and how they’ll act. Because the truth is, McConnell has the likes of Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska firmly in his pocket. He’s counting on their help to kill Biden’s infrastructure and jobs packages. And he’s going to get it.
It’s not that the moderates don’t consider themselves to be independent thinkers, and don’t make occasional efforts to work with Democrats. But when it counts, they do what McConnell wants.
We’ve been through this routine so many times it’s remarkable that there are still people who don’t understand how it works. The moderates string Democrats along for as long as possible, assuring everyone that they really, really want to be bipartisan. They express deep concern about the extremists in their own party. They pine, visibly and painfully, for the days when members of both parties routinely crossed the aisle. Then they vote with McConnell.
That has been the pattern on every remotely controversial piece of legislation in recent years. In 2009 and 2010 the GOP moderates negotiated endlessly with Democrats over the Affordable Care Act — then every last one of them voted against it. How many moderates objected when McConnell held open a Supreme Court seat for nearly a year to deprive President Barack Obama of the ability to fill it? Zero.
In 2017 McConnell and President Donald Trump giddily passed tax cuts gift-wrapped for the wealthy and corporations — and every moderate voted for it. Every one of them voted against the American Rescue Plan earlier this year, not because it was so drastically different from the pandemic relief bills passed in 2020, but because this time a Democrat president would reap the political benefit.
The only time in recent history that a few moderate Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to do something meaningful that seemed to contradict McConnell’s wishes was when three of them voted against their party’s misconceived 2017 attempt to repeal the ACA — and that was the exception that proves the rule.
That’s because when Collins, Murkowski and John McCain (R-Ariz.) deprived the GOP of the 50 votes it needed, they were doing McConnell and the GOP a favor. Throwing roughly 20 million Americans off health coverage and rewriting the rules of the whole system would have been so cataclysmic that any smart Republican knew it would be a nightmare for the party. Instead, they showed the base that they were making an effort but didn’t have to suffer the consequences had they succeeded.
So the only time a few moderate Republicans appeared to be rebelling against McConnell, they actually weren’t.
And yet some people still hope that next time, the moderates might say no to McConnell and join with Democrats to provide a victory for Biden. When conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), a desperate defender of the filibuster, was pressed on McConnell’s comment about stopping Biden, he brushed it off.
“That’s one person,” Manchin said Wednesday, adding that “I can assure you” that “there are Republicans working with Democrats” to “make something happen” on infrastructure.
Manchin is right about the short term, and spectacularly wrong about the medium and long term. Yes, he’s talking to Republican colleagues about infrastructure. But just as they did on the American Rescue Plan and on Obamacare, they will negotiate with him and then vote against the bill.
They have two different incentives, and they’ve figured out how to satisfy both. On one hand, they want their constituents (many of whom are not Republicans) to see them as independent and reasonable — so they make a show of talking to Democrats as the legislative process proceeds.
On the other, it’s in their interest for Biden to fail, since that helps every Republican. So there’s no way they’ll give Democrats votes to pass the bill, which is why Democrats will need to pass it with the simple-majority reconciliation process.
Just after saying he was 100 percent focused on opposing Biden, McConnell added, “What we have in the United States Senate is total unity from Susan Collins to Ted Cruz in opposition to what the new Biden administration is trying to do to this country.” Don’t doubt it for a moment.