Don’t Trust Slithering Mitch

He’s read the political tea leaves but he’s still who he’s always been: the craftiest party hack in the GOP

(With my apologies to actual snakes)

I’m a transplanted New Jersey girl, living in Lexington Kentucky for the past 3 decades. My friends from the Northeast often ask me: “Why do you folks keep electing Mitch McConnell?”

It’s a good question.

It isn’t because we like him, because most Kentuckians think he’s a creep.

Matt Jones, sports commentator who considered a run against Mitch in 2020 and travelled to every one of Kentucky’s 120 counties interviewing folks, found few people with a good word to say about him: “To call Mitch a ‘people person’ would be like called Jared Kushner a ‘self-made man.’ He has no real charisma, no discernible people skills.”  Matt’s interviewees are more colorful in their use of language: “If Mitch McConnell was a hound dog, even the fleas would stay away from him,” says a flannel-shirted, older Stanton voter: “I don’t like Mitch and I don’t know how anyone could. He’s a weasel and we gotta get him out of there.”

Mitch has done nothing for our state but block every vote that could help with our legion problems of poverty, poor health (think he’s a champion of coal miners? Ask the folks who’ve gotten no help for Black Lung Disease) and failing small industry. He’s voted against COVID relief, and has been among the fiercest opponents of the ACA, despite the fact that it’s been hugely successful keeping poor Kentuckians alive. And he’s the personification of the GOP’s credo of political power above principle. “Whatever it is that you hate about politics the most,” Matt writes, “chances are Mitch McConnell is largely responsible for its existence.”

So why do we keep electing him? Mostly it’s because of the enduring belief that so long as Republicans exercises control of the Senate, those “coastal elites” who Kentuckians are convinced (not without justification) look down on Southerners won’t take over. In playing this card, Mitch has been extremely skilled in the Roger Ailes/Fox TV school of throwing rotten garbage at his “socialist,” “baby-killing,” “defund the police” opponents. According to that well-worn playbook, lying is irrelevant. Scaring voters about your opponents and endlessly repeating the lies that scare them the most works. And that’s what counts.

Until this past mid-term it worked, anyway. And then the expected red wave failed to crash on the shore. True, it wasn’t held back in Kentucky, where the despicable Rand Paul was re-elected despite Charles Booker’s wonderful campaign “from hood to holler,” and although Kentuckians voted “no” to an amendment declaring there is no state right to abortion. Dobbs pulled the trigger on whatever small victory we were celebrating.

But Mitch has never cared about Kentucky, anyway. He’s always had his reptile eye on the national scene. And dour and unpleasant as he is, he’s smart—possibly the second-most skilled party leader of the center (Nancy Pelosi being the first.) You know he’s got to be cringing at the crazies, rabid ideologues, and election-deniers that McCarthy is installing in House Committees. Carefully, he’s maintained it’s not his role to interfere. But he knows the party may be heading for disaster in 2024.

So suddenly we find Mitch in photo-ops with President Biden, standing in front of the decaying Brent Spence bridge, declaring his willingness to work “across party lines” to fix Kentucky’s ailing infrastructure. Then, just a few days ago, he infuriated Trump and his political progeny by declaring that “America must never default on its debt. It never has and it never will”—and called on McCarthy to negotiate with the Biden administration to make sure it doesn’t happen.

These are tiny adjustments, despite Trump’s furious branding of Mitch as a “rubber stamp for the Democrats.” Although he has vowed to find better “quality candidates” for the Senate than whoever Trump picks in 2024, he is still an “always vote along party lines” guy. And he knows that it’s not candidate quality but Florida gerrymandering that gave the House the Republicans it needed to take control.

But as slight as Mitch’s attempts to squirm away from being identified with the crazies pile up, my skin has started to crawl. Of course, I want the Brent Spence bridge fixed. But it’s hard not to see Mitch’s “bipartisanship” as strategically self-serving—as his every move has always been.

What has he got in mind?

Wondering about Mitch has also got me wondering about future plans of so-called “moderate” Republicans (a media concoction; there are no “moderate” Republicans, only silent cowards who now seem to be lemmings heading for a cliff.) Whatever it is, watch out for Mitch; he is sure to be at forefront of any new formation. And even if he brings his own hammer to the Brent Spence bridge, he’s as much a snake as always.

Sources

Matt Jones, Mitch, Please, Simon and Schuster, 2020

“Biden Celebrates infrastructure projects with Mitch McConnell in Kentucky,” PBS Newshour transcript, January 4, 2023

“McConnell calls Trump ‘diminished’, vows to find ‘quality’ Senate candidates in 2024,” Julia Shapiro, The Hill, December 23, 2022.

“McConnell plans backseat role as McCarthy battles White House over debt ceiling,’ Manu Raju and Ted Barrett, CNN Politics, January 23, 2023