So much to rant about these days! I can’t keep up! Well, anyway, it’s not so topical any more, but here’s my political eulogy for a Senator who’s long drawn withering fire from the Needlefish editorial staff, and well-deserved it was too. Some parting shots, then:
Who’s the politician whose malign influence has been the most corrosive to American democracy? Who, in living memory, did the most damage, was the most cynically partisan, the most cravenly unprincipled, the most deeply and amorally unconcerned with accomplishing anything that didn’t involve staying in power? Who did the most to shatter the norms that made constructive governance possible within a political system designed deliberately to be ridiculously prone to gridlock? Who do you think, dear reader, was the absolute worst?
You already know, from the title of today’s post, where I come down on these questions, but there’s no denying it’s a tough call. Reasonable folk can disagree. So many Republicans to choose from! What a rogue’s roster, I mean, God in Heaven, the bench depth!
A few years before I was born, the average pundit would probably have picked Wisconsin’s own Joe McCarthy, the witch-hunting, Commie-purging demagogue who made us all keenly aware of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and whose governing philosophy was so vile that his last name became a derogatory “ism”. McCarthy and McCarthyism were so disgusting, so antithetical to the ideals Americans professed to hold dear, and finally so reviled, that it was assumed his like would never be tolerated again.
When I was a kid, most would have said Nixon, whose zest for blacklisting, abuse of power, assorted criminal activities, and election campaign rat-fucking revealed him to be a dangerous threat to democracy, and who was, by the end, a stumbling drunk incapable of crisis management. This was a particular pity owing to the contemporary emergence of a crisis in superpower relations spurred by the Yom Kippur War.
Later, along came Ronald Reagan, who began the process of dismantling the New Deal, ran up monstrous deficits with his Laffer Curve/trickle-down nonsense, conducted an illegal private war in Central America funded by what amounted to the theft of government property (weapons sold secretly and illegally to Iran), and spent the last couple of years of his second term in a fog of certifiable dementia, while wife Nancy played Presidential pinch hitter.
After him came Newt Gingrich, who weaponized Congress and ushered in the current age of obstructionism and refusal to govern by bi-partisan compromise, absent which the Founders’ design for the whole American political system falls to pieces. Newt was the driving force behind the first protracted government shutdown in U.S. history, bless him.
And how about George Bush the Younger, who ignored pre-9/11 intelligence warnings, launched a disastrous war of choice in Iraq (the consequences of which continue to haunt us), and finished up by presiding over an economic calamity during which the lights threatened to go out all over the world? It wasn’t that long ago that most of us were sure we’d never get anyone worse than our W.
Then, of course, came Donald. No need to recap the many highlights of his fetid tenure! Surely, nobody could be worse than Trump!
Yet there is somebody. Mitch. Mitch McConnell is worse than Trump. Worse than any of them, from McCarthy through Bush II, worse even than Newt Gingrich, a creature so viscerally repugnant that I swear, if I saw him on the street, the urge to kick him in the nuts so hard they’d pop out of his goddam nostrils would be diabolical. Yes, Mitch is even worse than the hated Newt. Jon Stewart might have agreed with me; he used to liken McConnell to a cartoon turtle named Cecil, who showed up in a couple of Looney Tunes shorts. It seemed apt enough, but Mitch was more tortoise than turtle, I think, though certainly not of the affable, sympathetic sort you might find thumping around amid the foliage of the Galapagos. He was a one-off. Evil. Toxic. Carnivorous. Scheming. He kicked around Washington for a long, long time, did Mitch, and he racked up lots of what he’d tell you were solid achievements. Let’s review a few of his biggest political wins, shall we?
What follows, space being constrained, can only be a sampling.
Where to start? Corruption? Well, it’s because of Mitch, with a mighty boost from the Senate’s ridiculous filibuster rules, and the kind help of SCOTUS, that all thoughts of campaign finance reform were banished forever, while millions upon billions in dark money have flooded the political system, ensuring happy tax and regulatory outcomes for America’s flourishing clique of oligarchs. Nobody fought harder than Mitch to keep that sweet, sweet lucre flowing. In the result, the GOP was for many years the private property of the donor class, a sad situation that endured until Trump’s takeover (which can also be laid at Mitch’s doorstep, see below),
Murdering democracy? It’s because of Mitch, again with a mighty assist from SCOTUS, that nothing’s been done to protect voting rights or reform America’s byzantine, rickety election apparatus. Repeated Democratic initiatives to undo the damage done by the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, culminating with the For the People Act – a bill that could have changed the electoral system in a hundred beneficial ways, dealing with voter suppression, gerrymandering, the ridiculous patchwork of State voting systems and procedures, and all sorts of problems – met their demise at the tip of McConnell’s rapier.
Turning the GOP into the “party of no”? It’s because of Mitch that nothing even remotely constructive, let alone progressive, was achieved during the last six of Obama’s eight years as President. His top priority as a legislator, proclaimed early on with apparent moral certitude, was to make sure that Obama didn’t get a second term. Full stop. That’s why he was serving as a senior legislator; that was his vision for the American people. Later, when Obama got his second term anyway, Mitch made it clear that he’d never allow any bill to pass, whatever its merits, if it could be touted as a Democratic success (sound familiar?). This was essentially an unconstitutional abandonment of his duty to legislate in the best interests of the American people, but hey, what the hell. The Constitution didn’t have its own police force and court system, did it? Mitch could do as he pleased, and it pleased him that so long as Obama was sitting in the Oval, no laws could pass.
Welcoming Vlad the Impaler into the fold? It’s because of Mitch that Russian interference in the 2016 election remained a partisan political issue, rather than a generally acknowledged threat to national security. Thanks to Mitch, the plain facts remained readily characterizable by Trump and his enablers as Democratic belly-aching and fake news. Mitch knew full well how forcefully Putin was putting his thumb on the scale for Donald. He knew all about the troll farms, the hacking, the disinformation, and the sowing of dissension by Vlad’s little helpers. He also had well-founded suspicions about Russian penetration of Trump’s campaign staff. Obama all but begged McConnell to sign on to a bipartisan communique condemning this grave foreign assault on American democracy, which surely was something that should alarm all patriotic Americans, irrespective of party affiliation. Nope. No dice. The tortoise wouldn’t do it. If it put a Republican in the White House, Russian fuckery was just fine by him.
Turning the courts into an arm of the GOP? It’s Mitch who made sure that the federal judiciary, from the district courts right on up to SCOTUS, became stacked with Republican hacks from the Federalist Society’s list of 30-year-old ideological extremists. First, when he wasn’t majority leader in the Senate, Mitch exploited the filibuster to stonewall hundreds of Obama appointees, to the absurd point that Democratic majority leader Harry Reed, growing desperate, finally changed the rules for all judicial appointments save those to SCOTUS. By then, sadly, it was too late to fill a great many of the vacancies. Eventually, Trump would get to do that. When Mitch then became Senate Majority Leader, he famously stopped Obama from filling a SCOTUS vacancy, arguing, with eight months still left to go in Obama’s term, that it was “too close to the election”, and “the American people should decide”. Mitch claimed that such was established practice. This was of course bullshit, and indeed unambiguously unconstitutional, but again, who cared? Having thus stolen one Supreme Court seat, he grabbed another when he had a chance to ignore his own new rule about proximity to the election, and hustled to get Amy Coney Barrett on to SCOTUS with about a month left in Trump’s term. He shared none of Harry Reed’s reluctance when it came to monkeying around with the procedure governing Supreme Court appointments, and changed the filibuster rules to get it done, wrapping things up in late October, 2020. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was barely in the ground, and the general election, once deemed too close when it was eight months down the road, was only weeks away, when Amy took her place.
Think of all the misery that the 6-3 Republican majority has since inflicted. Think of all that’s still to come, for years and years going forward, until all laws that protect the weak, preserve the common good, and secure the rights of Americans are neutered, while the Bill of Rights becomes little more than a dead letter. That’s all down to Mitch. That’s McConnell’s most lasting legacy.
Saving Donald’s bacon, bigly? It’s because of Mitch that both of Trump’s impeachments came to nothing. Dealing with the second one, following the January 6 insurrection, the old bastard really outdid himself, slow-walking the process until it was too late to hold the Senate trial before Trump left office, then whipping the votes to acquit on the made-up grounds that it was now moot, because Donald was no longer in office. Then, you’ll recall, the grimly satisfied old Machiavellian took to the Senate floor to give just the damndest speech, during which he asserted with some gusto that Trump had indeed led an insurrection, and ought to be dealt with by the courts! Oh yes, Donald was morally and practically responsible, no doubt about it, but he wasn’t getting away with anything, not when America was protected by the rule of law, nossir. Sure, Mitch. Tell it to SCOTUS. Tell it to Judge Cannon down there in Florida. Tell it to all the other stooges with whom you gleefully populated the judiciary.
Never forget: if it wasn’t for Mitch, Trump would have been convicted on his second impeachment, and would now be forever barred from seeking office. But for Mitch, we wouldn’t now be facing the prospect of Donald’s foul cult putting an end to the American experiment.
AND NOW, as he plans to fade into the sunset next November, and has nothing further to gain or lose, what does he do? HE ENDORSES TRUMP FOR ANOTHER TERM AS PRESIDENT. I shit you not. This is literally McConnell’s express position: yes, Trump is a criminal insurrectionist, a mortal threat to democracy, and manifestly unfit to run a mom and pop convenience store, let alone assume the duties of the Presidency. Of course. That’s a given. So what? He leads the Tribe, and that’s all that matters. The GOP must win. No matter what. Party ahead of Country. Always.
Bear in mind, with this latest capitulation, McConnell lends his moral support to a pig of a man who repeatedly insulted Elaine Chow, Mitch’s wife, in writing, with racist epithets targeting her Asian background. Mitch wouldn’t even stand up for his own wife, not if it meant irritating Trump and his deplorable Base. You had to have priorities. First we win back the Senate. Then, maybe, we defend the dignity of our loved ones.
That’s Mitch. More than anyone, he is the architect of the current moral and political dysfunction. More than anyone, he set America down the road to white minority rule, autocracy, and fascism. Everywhere you look, you can see the ruins he leaves behind. All over the landscape, his monuments are the burning remnants and smoking holes where America’s guardrail institutions once stood as bulwarks against the evil that Trump personifies.
Mitch McConnell isn’t a person; he’s a sentient haggis of bovine gas and shredded scruples, wrapped in a leathery sinner’s hide harvested and furnished by an appreciative Beelzebub. He’s the world’s largest pathogen. He’s a malignant cancer walking crabwise on skinny legs. At the age of 82, after decades of his dirty work, he goes back home to Kentucky imagining himself triumphant, unashamed, unabashed, and unafraid of the fiery pits of the Hell to which he’d soon be consigned, if a just God reigned in Heaven. Of course, if any just God existed, Mitch would long since have been fried by a mighty blue bolt of lightning, probably sometime back in the 1970s, and I’d never have heard of him.
If only.
On the other hand, if his fellow Kentucky Senator Rand Paul replaces him as Senate GOP leader, we may come to miss the old shellback.
Nah. Never happen.
the needlefish 