Good riddance to Mitch McConnell

Senator Mitch McConnell, the political Louisville Lip is finally giving up his spot as the top Senate Republican.

It is a blessing and a curse as Tony Shalhoub would say in “Monk."

It is a blessing because we won’t have Mitch to kick around anymore. His divisive politics have created a rancor unparalleled in American politics until we saw Newt Gingrich and then Donald Trump arrive on the scene. Neither of them would be possible without McConnell and there is no doubt McConnell understands that. “Believe me, I know the politics within my party at this particular time,” McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor as he announced to the world his pending retreat from the political stage. “I have many faults. Misunderstanding politics is not one of them.”

I agree with the “many faults” portion of that statement. And he does know the low art of politics. 

The curse is that whoever follows McConnell could be worse than him. John Thune, John Barrasso, and John Cornyn are all thought to be prospective successors.

Thune, the second highest-ranking Republican in the Senate is considered “the most moderate” of the three – according to Senate insiders. But that means very little in a party run by Donald Trump. Thune endorsed Tim Scott for president last year and endorsed Trump a few days ago, though he did chastise Trump for Jan. 6. “What former President Trump did to undermine faith in our election system and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is inexcusable,” he said after the insurrection.

Barrasso, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate is considered the most conservative of the three potential successors and became the second member of the Senate leadership to endorse Trump.

Cornyn, not in the leadership right now but the former Whip, is considered an outside alternative, who Senate insiders say “gives us a compromise candidate who can appeal to both conservatives and moderates.” As if “compromise” is a term any MAGA supporter understands. Ask House Speaker Mike Johnson about that.

As it turns out we have three outhouses, excuse me “Johns” to turn to as a potential replacement for the outgoing Mitch.

McConnell stumbles from a stage he largely built. His was the only seat Ronald Reagan picked up in the 1984 general election, and McConnell did it by pandering, lying and through self-serving abandonment of any pretense of mortality, scruples or professional behavior. He paved the highway of disingenuous and destructive behavior that rules the Republican Party to this day, and while he believes he’s falling on his sword honorably, I’ve never seen anything honorable, professional or redeeming about the man, privately or professionally. 

His political end is wryly humorous since he created the political dysfunction that has brought about his demise. 

He was the first politician outside of my family I ever interviewed. I was the editor of my high school paper at the time and decided part of a special issue we did on Louisville as “The City of the 70s” had to include interviews with McConnell who was the county executive at the time, and Louisville’s Democratic mayor.

The night before I interviewed McConnell, as I’ve often told the story, I called up my uncle Pete, a former member of the local GOP and local Circuit Court Judge who knew McConnell well. He told me of a time McConnell tried to take over the local Republican party, failed, and then threw his co-conspirator under the bus which resulted in McConnell getting the gift of a seat in the party leadership which eventually led to his election as county executive. “Mitch McConnell is about one thing,” Pete warned me over and over again. “What is that?” I asked. “Mitch McConnell,” my uncle replied.

In all the years I’ve known and covered McConnell from near and mostly afar, that statement has stayed with me and it is the most damning, cutting and accurate description of McConnell I’ve heard, before or since.

He swept into power in Jefferson County, Kentucky as a moderate. His office had a human rights commission. He supported abortion, and union labor, and spoke about equal opportunity. 

Hints of McConnell’s long-range goals surfaced in my first meeting with him. He told me then that only the federal government could solve some of the city’s major problems. Even in 1979 he was gunning for greater power. “I will give the press and the public the opportunity to be assured that no undue influence is being exerted on my public policy decisions,” he said. “We need federal representatives in our state who believe that and are responsible to voters’ needs.”

We laugh now, but McConnell actually supported bipartisanship and said those who strictly adhere to party politics were “old-fashioned politicians.” He pushed for mandatory auto emission inspections and said “The federal government ought to deal with this by making Detroit make a cleaner car.”

In the end, he sold out everything he claimed he stood for in 1979.

McConnell actually didn’t care about the issues. He was a political grifter with a southern smile, a soft handshake and in his later years a warbling cadence and voice that reminded one of a wild turkey with distemper wandering through the woods, lost, proud and very vocal.

In 1984 he ran against a widely popular Democratic Dee Huddleston for Senate and it was there we first saw McConnell’s true, rancid colors.  

Behind in the polls by double digits, McConnell’s team crafted a television ad that featured Kentucky hunters with the aid of baying coon hounds on the hunt through the underbrush and on the steps of the Congress trying to find Huddleston. The ad claimed Dee was never around D.C. to cast a vote. At the time he had one of the highest percentage rates of attendance of any Congressman.

The ad was a lie. A fabrication. But it worked.

And once in office, McConnell turned his back on the moderates to embrace Ronald Reagan and the conservative movement of evangelicals, rednecks, and rubes that was Reagan’s governing coalition. Or as Gene Wilder said in Blazing Saddles; “You know. Morons.”

McConnell has been the far right’s best friend. He never authored a major piece of legislation. His greatest victories came in helping to appoint conservative judges to federal vacancies and guiding the actions of a party that became increasingly obtuse, morally bankrupt and power mad. The Republican Party in many, many ways came to resemble its chief architect: Mitch McConnell.

His greatest achievement, according to McConnell, was blocking the appointment of someone to the Supreme Court until after the 2016 election following Antonin Scalia’s unexpected death. Always true to his hypocrisy, McConnell berated Democrats for considering the same action when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died less than two months before the 2020 election. Compare that to Scalia who died in February of 2016 - nine months before the 2016 election. An argument can be made that Mitch McConnell is the reason Roe v. Wade was overturned. I will never forgive McConnell for that piece of low handed political putrescence.  

Mitch McConnell broke with Trump over the Jan. 6 insurrection and aid to Ukraine. He was a true Reaganite and hated the Soviet Union – and those on his staff, and the senator himself often compared Putin’s government to the Soviet Union. And he wasn’t wrong. He was also capable of understanding the difference between appearance and reality, and while McConnell remains a slimy Republican capable of multiple manipulations, he has always been comfortable in the swamp of Democracy. He sees Putin’s activities – and for that matter Trump’s – as an existential threat to the United States. He wasn’t wrong here either.

Trump of course hates him for it. And true to McConnell’s hypocrisy, he’s rumored to be considering supporting Trump in this year’s election.

McConnell has spent his political life in the confines of D.C., occasionally venturing home to Louisville, where ironically he lives in one of the few remaining progressive old neighborhoods. His home in Louisville’s Cherokee Triangle is one of the few places where, if you are as publicly despised as McConnell is, you can also live reasonably free from death threats – though you will have to endure the occasional woke protester.

McConnell has spent his time holding things close to his vest as he cruised through Washington. He is smart. He is calculating and he made his way through the swamp like a shark, digesting smaller and less capable swamp creatures. He owned the swamp. He certainly made money off of it.

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Though he built the current Republican Party, his biggest failure was not realizing the sycophants who used him to come to power in the party ultimately were not his allies. They were as narcissistic as McConnell and far more dangerous because they are untethered from the ideals of democracy. McConnell, whatever his flaws, was not. And while none of them are smarter than McConnell, they are more vindictive, younger and cunning.

In his zeal for power, in his desire to lead, he was blinded by his own hubris. The Republicans in the House and Senate who came after McConnell showed him nothing but contempt. McConnell is now the “old-fashioned'' politician he once complained about. These MAGA members, in their hubris, fail to realize McConnell labored to turn the swamp into the sewer the current MAGA party members enjoy today.

President Biden, ever the statesman, complimented McConnell upon hearing he plans to step down from his leadership role. “He and I have trust, we’ve got a great relationship, we fight like hell but he never, never, never misrepresented anything. I’m sorry to hear he’s stepping down,” Biden said Thursday.

I disagree and find no reason to be cordial, or polite to a man whose entire political career was anathema to all I hold dear. McConnell fouled the waters. Lied. Conned.

I watched Trump dangle McConnell like a dog on a leash in the Rose Garden on two occasions during his term. McConnell chafed at this and his beady little eyes bulged with contempt as he had to choke down the filth Trump spewed. But again, McConnell was the architect of it all. And he did swallow.

I have no room for a man whose legacy is the divisiveness I see daily. I feel no sympathy for him. I feel nothing at all for him.

So, goodbye Mitch McConnell. Don’t let the door hit you in your rear on the way out. The hope I take from this is while many of his successors are far more vindictive and potentially more dangerous than McConnell – they are not that smart. Let the exodus of dystopian dimwits begin.  

Dislodging them and showing them the door won’t take 40 years.

Mostly because the U.S. doesn’t have that long to live as a democracy if it does.