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Opinion: McConnell focuses ‘100 percent’ on blocking Biden — and zero percent on America

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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Opinion by
Dana Milbank
Columnist
May 26, 2021 at 3:21 p.m. CDT

It has long been obvious that Mitch McConnell puts party before country, but this week he actually admitted it.
The Senate minority leader told Republican colleagues that they should oppose the creation of a Jan. 6 commission, no matter how it is structured, because it “could hurt the party’s midterm election message,” as Politico’s Burgess Everett reported.

And so, as early as Thursday, McConnell will use the filibuster to thwart a bipartisan effort to prevent further attacks on the U.S. government by domestic terrorists — because he thinks it’s good politics for Republicans.
“That is extremely frustrating and disturbing,” Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), the Democrat working hardest to protect the minority’s filibuster rights, told reporters. “There’s a time when you rise above [politics], and I’m hoping that this would be the time that he would do that. I guess, from what I am hearing, he hasn’t.”


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Manchin has every right to be disturbed. But he shouldn’t be surprised.
McConnell, asked this month about the ouster of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from GOP leadership, and whether he was concerned that many Republicans believe Donald Trump’s election lie, replied, twice: “One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.” True to his word, McConnell has blocked everything — even if it means undercutting Republican negotiators.
In addition to denouncing the Jan. 6 commission bill, negotiated by the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, McConnell undercut Tim Scott (S.C.), the lone Black Republican in the Senate and McConnell’s designee to negotiate policing legislation. McConnell upended negotiations by announcing opposition to any bill that doesn’t preserve qualified immunity for police.



This week, McConnell disrupted progress on a broadly bipartisan bill designed to improve American technological competitiveness against China. Even though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had followed “regular order” and allowed Republicans to amend the bill, McConnell threatened to filibuster the bill if Democrats didn’t slow the process further. On Monday, he demanded “a number of further votes on important amendments before there would be any attempt to shut off debate.”
Why? Because unrelenting obstruction is McConnell’s only way to placate the GOP base in the face of Trump’s attacks. The former president has called McConnell, among other things, a “dumb son of a bitch,” a “dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack,” “gutless and clueless,” “weak and pathetic,” a “stone-cold loser,” and a leader Republicans “should change.” The attacks must be rattling McConnell, for he has been unusually clumsy in his appeals to the Trumpian base.
He earned an extraordinary rebuke from the University of Louisville (the Kentuckian’s alma mater and home to the McConnell Center) when he declared that it was an “exotic notion” to believe that 1619 — the year in which slaves arrived in the American colonies — is among “the most important dates in American history.” Before that, McConnell threatened “serious consequences” for “woke” corporations that moved business from Georgia because of the state’s discriminatory new voting restrictions.



On the infrastructure bill, he and his Republican colleagues are using the same techniques they used to try to derail the covid-relief legislation earlier this year: suggesting that Biden is a marionette manipulated by his staff. It’s just another way of planting the notion that Biden is mentally unfit.
In February, McConnell suggested that Biden was prevented by his staff from negotiating. “Our members who were in the meeting felt that the president seemed more interested in that than his staff did,” McConnell said. Republicans referred to Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, as “Prime Minister Klain” and “the guy behind the curtain,” and they suggested that Biden had his wings clipped by economic adviser Brian Deese.
Now they’re suggesting that aides are manipulating Biden on infrastructure. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 GOP leader under McConnell, said Tuesday that the White House staff is “not as inclined to make a deal as the president is.”



And longtime McConnell adviser Josh Holmes claimed Tuesday that White House “staff treats Biden as though he’s an invalid who just wanders into a meeting and knows not what he speaks.”
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) picked up the Biden-as-puppet theme Wednesday, suggesting Biden backed Republicans’ $1 trillion infrastructure proposal — until staff overruled him. “We went backwards very significantly when the staff came in with a much, much higher number than what I thought the president agreed to,” he said on CNBC.
The insulting implication that Biden is not in control, coming from his longtime Senate colleagues, would naturally anger Biden. So why try to undercut Biden in such a personal way? To poison the well as negotiators make a rare attempt at bipartisanship.

Maybe Manchin will be disturbed by this, too. He is still trying to negotiate on infrastructure, and to get 10 Republicans to support a Jan. 6 commission and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. More power to him. But sooner or later, he’ll have to conclude that there’s no negotiating when McConnell has a 100 percent focus on obstruction.

 
Put the turtle on his back and let him starve to death.

tenor.gif
 
There is only one thing I can think of where I agree with McConnell. I believe in qualified immunity for police officers. If the George Floyd bill was to pass I have no doubt it would deter good people from law enforcement and crime would sky rocket. Being personally responsible for a split second decision shouldn’t cost someone everything by a ambulance chasing attorney like Ben Crump.
 
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Opinion by
Dana Milbank
Columnist
May 26, 2021 at 3:21 p.m. CDT

It has long been obvious that Mitch McConnell puts party before country, but this week he actually admitted it.
The Senate minority leader told Republican colleagues that they should oppose the creation of a Jan. 6 commission, no matter how it is structured, because it “could hurt the party’s midterm election message,” as Politico’s Burgess Everett reported.

And so, as early as Thursday, McConnell will use the filibuster to thwart a bipartisan effort to prevent further attacks on the U.S. government by domestic terrorists — because he thinks it’s good politics for Republicans.
“That is extremely frustrating and disturbing,” Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), the Democrat working hardest to protect the minority’s filibuster rights, told reporters. “There’s a time when you rise above [politics], and I’m hoping that this would be the time that he would do that. I guess, from what I am hearing, he hasn’t.”


ADVERTISING


Manchin has every right to be disturbed. But he shouldn’t be surprised.
McConnell, asked this month about the ouster of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from GOP leadership, and whether he was concerned that many Republicans believe Donald Trump’s election lie, replied, twice: “One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.” True to his word, McConnell has blocked everything — even if it means undercutting Republican negotiators.
In addition to denouncing the Jan. 6 commission bill, negotiated by the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, McConnell undercut Tim Scott (S.C.), the lone Black Republican in the Senate and McConnell’s designee to negotiate policing legislation. McConnell upended negotiations by announcing opposition to any bill that doesn’t preserve qualified immunity for police.



This week, McConnell disrupted progress on a broadly bipartisan bill designed to improve American technological competitiveness against China. Even though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had followed “regular order” and allowed Republicans to amend the bill, McConnell threatened to filibuster the bill if Democrats didn’t slow the process further. On Monday, he demanded “a number of further votes on important amendments before there would be any attempt to shut off debate.”
Why? Because unrelenting obstruction is McConnell’s only way to placate the GOP base in the face of Trump’s attacks. The former president has called McConnell, among other things, a “dumb son of a bitch,” a “dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack,” “gutless and clueless,” “weak and pathetic,” a “stone-cold loser,” and a leader Republicans “should change.” The attacks must be rattling McConnell, for he has been unusually clumsy in his appeals to the Trumpian base.
He earned an extraordinary rebuke from the University of Louisville (the Kentuckian’s alma mater and home to the McConnell Center) when he declared that it was an “exotic notion” to believe that 1619 — the year in which slaves arrived in the American colonies — is among “the most important dates in American history.” Before that, McConnell threatened “serious consequences” for “woke” corporations that moved business from Georgia because of the state’s discriminatory new voting restrictions.



On the infrastructure bill, he and his Republican colleagues are using the same techniques they used to try to derail the covid-relief legislation earlier this year: suggesting that Biden is a marionette manipulated by his staff. It’s just another way of planting the notion that Biden is mentally unfit.
In February, McConnell suggested that Biden was prevented by his staff from negotiating. “Our members who were in the meeting felt that the president seemed more interested in that than his staff did,” McConnell said. Republicans referred to Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, as “Prime Minister Klain” and “the guy behind the curtain,” and they suggested that Biden had his wings clipped by economic adviser Brian Deese.
Now they’re suggesting that aides are manipulating Biden on infrastructure. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 GOP leader under McConnell, said Tuesday that the White House staff is “not as inclined to make a deal as the president is.”



And longtime McConnell adviser Josh Holmes claimed Tuesday that White House “staff treats Biden as though he’s an invalid who just wanders into a meeting and knows not what he speaks.”
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) picked up the Biden-as-puppet theme Wednesday, suggesting Biden backed Republicans’ $1 trillion infrastructure proposal — until staff overruled him. “We went backwards very significantly when the staff came in with a much, much higher number than what I thought the president agreed to,” he said on CNBC.
The insulting implication that Biden is not in control, coming from his longtime Senate colleagues, would naturally anger Biden. So why try to undercut Biden in such a personal way? To poison the well as negotiators make a rare attempt at bipartisanship.

Maybe Manchin will be disturbed by this, too. He is still trying to negotiate on infrastructure, and to get 10 Republicans to support a Jan. 6 commission and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. More power to him. But sooner or later, he’ll have to conclude that there’s no negotiating when McConnell has a 100 percent focus on obstruction.

Soooo...like the Dems did with Tim Scott’s law enforcement reform Bill? Cry about the need to reform. Have a black man from the other side actually come to the table with a Bill and offering amendments to Dems and they completely shut it down as to not give the GOP a win on any of their fake big issues. Yeah. Exactly like that.
 
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Soooo...like the Dems did with Tim Scott’s law enforcement reform Bill? Cry about the need to reform. Have a black man from the other side actually come to the table with a Bill and offering amendments to Dems and they completely shut it down as to not give the GOP a win on any of their fake big issues. Yeah. Exactly like that.
You are a small minuscule amount above a MAGAt.
 
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There is only one thing I can think of where I agree with McConnell. I believe in qualified immunity for police officers. If the George Floyd bill was to pass I have no doubt it would deter good people from law enforcement and crime would sky rocket. Being personally responsible for a split second decision shouldn’t cost someone everything by a ambulance chasing attorney like Ben Crump.

To an extent I agree, but it also doesn’t seem as though cops are being held responsible at all. It’s one thing to say they were justified in the moment, but they also need to be able look back and admit that they were wrong and learn from their mistakes.
 
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It was Senator Mitch McConnell who said after
Obama was elected to be President:

"My goal is to make him a one term President"

Bottom Line: McConnell has a history of blocking
and obstructing the legislative process in the Senate.

Why on earth does he feel emboldened to publicly air his intentions? It goes with the Reptile's tendency to intimidate, but criminy, this is in your face, "what compromise?".

I have been a political junkie most of my like, and have seen extremes, but our process is so far off the rails, I can't see how it can come back. We are actually seeing Republican legislatures calculating how to pre-empt elections. In our country. In the United States of America.

This is something I never considered. Never thought someone elected to the office of president of our country could be of such low character, and that character could mobilize a large enough segment of the population to influence a political party to allow this to occur.

It's not that history hasn't recorded personalities that have attempted such, all with apocalyptical endings.
 
Soooo...like the Dems did with Tim Scott’s law enforcement reform Bill? Cry about the need to reform. Have a black man from the other side actually come to the table with a Bill and offering amendments to Dems and they completely shut it down as to not give the GOP a win on any of their fake big issues. Yeah. Exactly like that.
Another redo of this false equivalency. Let's see if it takes this time.
 
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The cult of woke leftist is doing more damage to this country than any foreign military power could ever dream of.
You're part of a cult, bro.



Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday, Republican strategists and writers agreed that their party has turned into a cult. They also argued that the first way to change the cult is to leave the cult, which means some outspoken GOP leaders would have to abandon the caucus.

Politico's Eugene Daniels began by citing Playbook, which spoke to Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) about how Republicans are fixing the conspiracy theories that have taken over their party. He conceded that it's hard when you're a Republican who wants to tell the truth. There's no audience for them.

"In order to protect his feelings, he needs people to lie for him and say he won," said Miller. "People who want their political careers to keep going are willing to lie for him. Some of these are working in politics, not just voters, but voters are part of a cult now. The cognitive dissonance doesn't really matter now any more than the cognitive dissonance of what David Koresh was telling his followers what mattered to them. They have come up with all these various rationalizations for this. This is the most insidious part."

He noted that the Republicans see that this is working for them because they're getting responses to their base, so they think they can win on it. He also explained that it's working for Russian President Vladimir Putin. And while some might roll their eyes at the allegation, Russia has essentially succeeded. An entire political party that doesn't believe in American democracy anymore. While they may have lost in 2020, their effort to bring down democracy is working.

Former Bush-Cheney political strategist Matthew Dowd agreed with Miller's assessment but said that he thinks people in Washington can do more than just shine a light on it.

"First, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, all who have spoken out need to leave their caucus," said Dowd. "By staying in their caucus, all they are doing is enabling the fact that the people who committed the big lie will hold power in 2022. Yeah, it's fine to say, 'I have a big problem with this,' but leave the caucus.
You have to leave the cult in order to disempower the cult."
 
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