As McConnell said proudly: “A lot of what we have done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. If not for McConnell’s iron will and laser focus, Garland would be on the court today, while Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett would not. He focused all his experience and energy on his highest priority: putting an extreme, right-wing majority on the Supreme Court, through a corrupted confirmation process. He orchestrated the massive Trump tax cut for the wealthiest Americans and came within one vote of repealing the Affordable Care Act without hearings, committee action or consultation with any affected interest groups. When Donald Trump became president, McConnell the partisan obstructionist became McConnell the partisan battering ram. As the election approached, McConnell blocked a proposal for congressional leaders to make a bipartisan condemnation of Russian interference in the election. In Obama’s last year, when Justice Antonin Scalia died, McConnell famously took the unprecedented step of refusing to allow the Senate to consider the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. McConnell began Barack Obama’s presidency by opposing the economic stimulus legislation needed to prevent a second Great Depression, and waged a scorched-earth war against the Affordable Care Act. Caro’s legendary “master of the Senate” - has had more impact on the country’s politics and history. More recently, a senior Republican operative with knowledge of GOP fundraising put the McConnell war chest at closer to $500 million.Īt 80 years old, McConnell is finishing his 16th year as a Senate leader, tying the record of the great Mike Mansfield for longest tenure. Vance, while earmarking other large sums for the races anticipated to be most closely contested. But its closing paragraphs report that McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund was flush with cash, with more than $100 million as of June, and that McConnell had transferred $28 million to the struggling campaign of Ohio Senate candidate J.D. The article understandably buoyed the spirits of Democrats. The question came to mind most recently after reading a Washington Post article about the difficulties that Senate Republican candidates and the National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC) were having in fundraising. David McCulloughĪfter all this time, is it still possible to underestimate Mitch McConnell’s political skill and his destructive impact on our country? Discovery comes most often not from finding something unknown or long hidden but from seeing afresh what has been on the table all along.
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