“Coverage Like A Hospital Gown”: Mitch McConnell Shouldn’t Assume For A Moment That Rand Paul Has His Back
Greg Sargent notes today that three highly influential “constitutional conservatives” in the Senate, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson, have gone out of their way to pass up opportunities to endorse Mitch McConnell in his 2014 primary against the previously almost unknown Matt Bevins. So, too, are the Club For Growth and the Senate Conservative Fund. All these individuals and organizations are obviously hoping to use the implicit threat of backing Bevins–and thus “nationalizing” the Kentucky race and making McConnell the new Dick Lugar or Bob Bennett and Bevins the new Richard Mourdock or Mike Lee–to influence McConnell’s behavior as Minority Leader in the Senate. The minute any of them endorse McConnell, this leverage is gone.
Meanwhile, Rand Paul has endorsed his senior colleague, even though McConnell tried to kill off his political career in 2010. But it hasn’t been enough to take McConnell off the table as a target for exactly the sort of insurgency Paul himself represented when he took on McConnell’s little buddy Tray Grayson.
So other than ensuring that Paul wouldn’t join the Matt Bevins bandwagon, what good is Rand’s endorsement actually going to do for McConnell going into 2014? Will his Paul’s Kentucky supporters pay attention to his position on the race? Or will they assume it was just a collegial gesture, and view what out-of-state “constitutional conservatives” say as the indication of what he’d really do if he could do what he wanted?
I dunno, but if I were ol’ Mitch, I wouldn’t for a moment assume Rand Paul had my back. The “coverage” may be like a hospital gown, where it’s flapping in the breeze even as people passing you in the hallways laugh at your exposed posterior.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 2, 2013
“GOP Hot Mess”: It’s Almost Enough To Make You Feel Bad For Them, Almost
It’s hard enough fighting a war against the president of the United States, with his bully pulpit and the resources of the executive branch at his disposal. But how can you prevail over him when all your time is spent battling your own comrades? This is the dilemma the Republican party confronts.
It’s happening everywhere. Mitch McConnell, who could plausibly claim to have done more to undermine Barack Obama than anyone else in the country, now faces a Tea Party primary challenge in his re-election race. Yesterday the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee lit into his party’s leadership after the Speaker pulled a bill funding transportation and housing from the floor, probably because they didn’t have the votes to pass it. Two likely 2016 presidential candidates, Senator Rand Paul and Governor Chris Christie, are in a public battle of insults that has all the dignity and gravitas of a grade-school playground slap-fight. Heroes of the right like Ted Cruz pour contempt on their colleagues for knuckling under to liberals, while establishment figures like John McCain fire back with equal derision. And the issue of immigration reform continues to rip the party apart at the seams, with elite Republicans convinced the GOP needs to pass reform if it’s to win a presidential campaign any time soon, and the party’s base (and the members of Congress who represent it) dead-set against anything that looks too kind to undocumented immigrants.
It wasn’t too long ago that Democrats looked at the Republican party with envy, marveling at its ability to keep all its factions talking, thinking, and moving in lockstep. That unity of purpose and action may return one day, but for now, the GOP is a hot mess. It’s almost enough to make you feel bad for them. Almost.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor; Jamie Fuller, The American Prospect, August 1, 2013
“Mitch McConnell Is Congress: It’s Hard Out There For An Obstructionist Minority Leader
To many people, a poll released today by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling probably came as a surprise. Mitch McConnell, the Minority Leader in the Senate, is shown trailing his challenger, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, by a point. But he’s a Republican in a conservative state, and one of the leaders of his party. How could he be in danger of losing?
For starters, Grimes looks to be a serious opponent. Her father is a well-known former state senator, she’s already won a statewide campaign, and she’s made some terrific videos with her grandmothers, tapping into Kentucky’s substantial pro-grandma vote. But that’s not the real source of McConnell’s problems. While one might think that the more important and influential a senator is in national politics the easier time he’d have winning re-election, the opposite is true, especially at a time like this.
Almost 40 years ago, political scientist Richard Fenno identified a curious phenomenon among voters: they hate Congress, but love their congressman. Congress is seen as corrupt, incompetent, venal, beset by infighting among competing interests each driven by its own bad faith. But Congressman Smith? Why, he’s our boy! He went to the same high school as my cousin. I saw him at the Fourth of July parade. He helped my buddy’s grandma get her Social Security check. He got money for the new bridge over the river. That’s a big reason why even when Congress is incredibly unpopular, almost all incumbents-over 95 percent in some years-get re-elected.
And it isn’t just the personal connections that drive this phenomenon, it’s also the media. A friend of mine wrote his dissertation on the way members of Congress are covered in local media, and what he found is that unless you get embroiled in a scandal, the coverage is almost all positive. The local papers and TV stations will run your picture when you cut the ribbon at the senior center you obtained funding for, or seek out your sage words on whatever the issue of the day is, but they rarely write anything critical about you.
But if you’re Mitch McConnell, you don’t get the benefit of that glowing coverage, because you’re in the news all the time for your role in national issues. The people of Kentucky don’t get a different view of McConnell than people anywhere else, and what they see is a guy who, pretty much by his own admission, is one of the prime forces creating and sustaining congressional gridlock and all other manner of Washington dysfunction. Other voters might have the liberty to hate Congress but love their senator, but Mitch McConnell is Congress.
The truth is that McConnell has never been hugely popular in Kentucky. He’s not a particularly lovable guy, even though he is one of the shrewdest and most ruthless politicians you’ll ever encounter. I’d hesitate to bet against him. But don’t be surprised if he ends up losing next year.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 1, 2013
“The GOP Roadblock To Repairs”: With Limited Time And Opportunity, Republican Infrastructure Intransigence Strikes Again
In 2005, the World Economic Forum ranked America’s infrastructure Number 1 in the world for “economic competitiveness.” Only eight short years later, the U.S. occupies 14th place. Instead of leading our global competitors in planning, staying current and building a transportation system for the 21st century, we have continued to invest at the same rate (in real inflation-adjusted dollars) as we did in 1968.
By way of example, Canada spends 4 percent of its GDP on transportation, investment and maintenance, with China spending 9 percent. The U.S. spends only 1.7 percent.
More than 69,000 of America’s bridges are deemed structurally deficient, more than 11 percent of all the bridges in our country. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the U.S. would need to invest $3.6 trillion between now and 2020 just to keep its infrastructure in “good” repair.
As a nation, our cities have become more congested, our commutes more delayed and our companies less productive. According to UPS, five minutes of daily delay for its trucks adds up to $100 million lost annually.
President Obama has long understood that investments made to our nation’s infrastructure will create jobs here in America that can’t be outsourced or replaced overseas. Interestingly, this is the same dynamic that has united two bitter enemies, the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, around their mutual quest to see Congress appropriate more funding for infrastructure projects.
Even Republicans seem to understand the need, or at least they have indicated so at times. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said, “Everybody knows we have a crumbling infrastructure. Infrastructure spending is popular on both sides. The question is how much are we going to spend.” Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., once claimed, “If you’re a Republican and you want to create jobs, then you need to invest in infrastructure that will allow us to create jobs.”
This week, President Obama proposed to cut corporate taxes and to invest in infrastructure projects to boost American jobs, all while being “revenue neutral.” These are concepts that have been championed by Republicans in the past, but generally ignored in recent times.
Unfortunately, true to form, the GOP backlash was immediate, claiming Obama’s plan offered them no concessions at all. McConnell said on the floor, “The plan, which I just learned about last night, lacks meaningful bipartisan input,” and thus he will oppose it. As the president suggested in a recent interview with the New York Times, “there’s almost a kneejerk habit right now that if I’m for it, then they’ve [Republicans in congress] got to be against it.”
So, once again, Congress is at a standstill while it admires our nation’s crumbling infrastructure. Seemingly, Republican leadership would rather put up roadblocks than work with the president to build and restore some of our nation’s fundamental structural needs to remain economically competitive – operative roads, bridges, dams, levees and rails. There are only 61 days left before the next government shutdown and nine legislative working days on the calendar in September. This limited time and opportunity will require leaders from both sides to step forward and work efficiently to pass the necessary legislation to get this country back on track.
Perhaps, while members of Congress are away in August, they will actually remember what they were for before they were against it.
By: Penny Lee, U. S. News and World Report, July 31, 2013
“Tea Party Radiation Fallout”: Damned If He Does, Damned If He Doesn’t, Mitch McConnell Has An Obamacare Problem
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has a major dilemma on his hands.
Throughout the past week, members of the Senate’s right wing — led by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Rand Paul (R-KY) — have been publicly lobbying their Republican colleagues to block the passage of any continuing resolution funding the federal government, unless it defunds the Affordable Care Act. The plan is functionally dead in the water — several reliable Obamacare opponents in the Senate have already derided the plan’s obvious flaws (first and foremost among them, that shutting down the government wouldn’t actually halt the Affordable Care Act’s implementation) — but it remains a politically potent symbol in Republican politics.
“There is a powerful, defeatist approach among Republicans in Washington,” Senator Cruz pointedly said on Tuesday. “I think they’re beaten down and they’re convinced that we can’t give a fight, and they’re terrified.”
The remarks were a thinly veiled shot at McConnell, who has thus far refused to take a position on the government shutdown plan.
“We’ve had a lot of internal discussions about the way forward this fall in both the continuing resolution and, ultimately, the debt ceiling, and those discussions continue,” McConnell said on Tuesday. “There’s no particular announcement at this point.”
McConnell may have to make a decision sooner rather than later, however. Matt Bevin, the Tea Party-backed businessman who is challenging McConnell for the Republican nomination in Kentucky’s 2014 Senate election, is seizing on McConnell’s reticence in an effort to outflank the four-term incumbent from the right.
“Mitch McConnell’s rhetoric on defeating Obamacare is nothing but empty promises,” Bevin said in a statement released Wednesday. “Obamacare is a disaster and if we can’t repeal it, we have a responsibility to the American people to defund it.”
“I challenge Mitch McConnell to join me in signing the pledge to defund Obamacare,” he continued. “Instead of playing political games, it’s time to stand up for the people of Kentucky.”
McConnell currently holds a massive lead over the largely-undefined Bevin, but if Bevin continues to attract right-wing support, the race could tighten significantly. If McConnell decides that the risk of shutting down the government for no tangible gain outweighs the risk of prolonged public attack from Tea Party favorites such as Cruz and Lee, then he could find himself very vulnerable in a Republican primary. Although Bevin remains an extreme long shot to steal the nomination from McConnell, a closely-contested primary could do serious damage to McConnell’s chances in the general election.
If McConnell does sign on to the Lee plan, however, it could cause him an even bigger headache. His likely Democratic opponent in 2014 — Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes — is already tailoring her campaign to paint McConnell as a “guardian of gridlock” who exemplifies the dysfunction in Washington, D.C. If McConnell agrees to attempt to shut down the government in a futile effort to repeal Obamacare, that image will be magnified — giving Grimes, who currently polls within striking distance of McConnell — a great political opportunity. Furthermore, due to McConnell’s status as the leader of the Senate Republicans, taking the extremist position could impact all the Republican senators on the ballot in 2014.
Whatever McConnell decides, it will not have a serious impact on the future of the Affordable Care Act. But it will have major ramifications in McConnell’s re-election battle — and could even decide which party ends up in control of the Senate.
By: Henry Decker, U. S. News and World Report, July 31, 2013
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