Which means, of course, you can list some of the posts pointing out some Democratic senator being lauded as a genius for pulling stunts like McTurtle has.
McConnell’s campaign strategy isn’t unusual, because he was one of the inventors. Raise a lot of money and run a lot of negative ads. That’s it. (sub req):
That McConnell became a prominent public figure because of his battles against limits on campaign spending is entirely apt. His career spans the era in which money has become the dominant force in our elections, and this suits him fine. Money is the most important ingredient in winning elections, McConnell decided after that first victory in Jefferson County [in 1977]. “Everything else is in second place,” he said in a post-election interview. He promised that in future campaigns, “I will always be well financed, and I’ll be well financed early.” He has kept that promise.
The next Republican leader of the Senate will be less talented than Mitch, causing many to miss Mitch. They really shouldn’t. Let’s review his accomplishments:
- Architect of obstructionism. The idea that any bill needs 60 votes to pass the Senate? That’s new and that’s Mitch’s doing. Josh Marshall:
Mitch McConnell’s great legacy is the thorough institutionalization of minority rule in U.S. politics, especially at the federal level. The first and most obvious part of that is that McConnell, more than anyone else, is the man who broke the United States Senate, largely by domesticating the filibuster. No more a wild bull kept out in the stockade for ugly moments but now living within the household, almost a family member, though no less dangerous and wild.
- Corrupter of the judiciary. Blocks milquetoast Merrick Garland, rushes rapist Kavanaugh into the SCOTUS. One rule for Dems, another for the GOP.
By throwing a wrench into the engine of legislation you create a vacuum that is inevitably filled by an increasingly activist judiciary. They are the yin and yang of today’s federal government, a broken legislative branch whose vacuum is filled by a right-wing activist federal judiciary. Thus McConnell’s only affirmative goal as Senate leader: the confirmation of right wing judges, who in this system amounted to the appointment of a permanent Republicanized federal legislature.
- Breaker of government, enabler of Trump. Because gridlock and polarization creates the disaffection that allows MAGA to thrive.
There is now a kind of rearguard effort to remake McConnell as an institutionalist, a last vestige of the pre-Trumpian GOP. And on that last point, being a vestige, there’s some truth. On being an institutionalist, not at all.
I just discovered that TPM permits unlimited gifted links for members. So here’s one on the house:
News to me. Cite?
Quick and dirty article on it.
From a CNN interview
Bash also asks about whether he regrets accusing Mitt Romney, with no evidence, of not paying his taxes. Without hesitation, “I don’t regret that at all.” When Bash followed up about some calling it “McCarthyite”, he gave a shrug with a little smirk:
And another
The first article is paywalled, but thanks for the other two. I’d forgotten about that incident, or had never known. Did Romney, in fact, pay taxes all ten years in question?
That seems to refute your premise right there, no?
From Post 24 above
“What does happen the day after the election is they’ll know if the new leader will be majority or minority leader come Jan. 3 2025. Though that is the call of the incoming elected delegation, the outgoing delegation, the vast majority of whom will be carrying over (only 11 out of 49 currently R seats are up this year, but there’s 22 Dem or Ind seats up) will surely want to place the incoming leader in a position to be in charge of the conference ASAP leading and making decisions.”
I believe this (2024) is the 34-seat class (or there may be a special election somewhere). With 11 R seats and 23 D/I seats the problem is that all 11 of the R seats seem to be safe while at least three (and maybe more) D/I seats are very possible flips (Tester-WY, Manchin-WV, and Brown-OH). Sinema’s Independent seat is a problem for D’s as well. And maybe others.
This means there’s a strong possibility that control of the Senate may flip D to R. I believe there’s a chance the House will flip the other way (R to D) but there’s also a chance that Trump could win AND have complete control of Congress.
That would be a disaster in so many ways: More SCOTUS nominees to cement a conservative majority for generations, draconian budget and program cuts without regard to economics and social implications, even blinder isolationism, further degradation of 14th amendment protections, etc.).
Things could get downright scary.
“Scarier.”
The Supreme Court has had a Republican majority since 1970. It’s not something that happened under McConnell nor Trump and it’s likely never been any other way during the adult life of most members of the board.
As you say, Republican appointees have made up a majority of the court for some time. What you have now, for the first time and thanks to McConnell, is a court with the majority of the justices being current or former Federalist Society members.
These are not your grandparents’ Republican justices.
Granted, but Mitch’s plan was to pack the Appeals courts as well with Judges amenable to pursuing partisan ends. Conveniently, the Federalist Society provided lists of politically reliable judges, unlike GOP nominees with independent thinking like Brennan, Warren, Stevens, O’Connor, or Powell.
I don’t want to frame McConnell as a puppet master, largely because he was the opposite, a guy who forged consensus within his caucus. Appointing Federalist judges is something that would have broad appeal among his GOP colleagues, even as it broke the precedent of limiting appointments to members judged highly qualified by the ABA (precedent had occasional exceptions of course, but bent rules are not broken ones).
That is not the rationalization. Let me explain something to you that modern conservatives have difficulty wrapping their heads around. Punching somebody in the face is wrong, very wrong. It shouldn’t be done. But what if somebody punches you in the face? What’s the appropriate response?
You turn the other cheek of course. We are not barbarians after all. Ok, then they hit you again. What’s the next move?
Regretfully and full of remorse, you hit back. Hard. Then you hit them again. And again. And you don’t stop punching until they start learning. It’s an educational technique. Sort of like tough love, if that helps. Harry Reid was a former practitioner of the hallowed art of pugilism: he was merely applying its precepts.
Republican voters generally don’t grasp this: they tend to be card-carrying members of the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party. So when a GOP controlled Senate makes greater use of the filibuster and the following Democratic Senate makes equal use of the filibuster as their predecessor, you will look in vain for any Republican pundit who discusses ratchet effects. Instead, they blame “Congress”. GOP voters like it that way, because they favor reassurance over tough minded analysis.
The great exception to this rule are Republican and former Republican posters on this message board, who like the rest of us here embody the virtues of humility, temperance, and sweet reason.
The Romney Martyr Myth strikes again.
One could also blame it on Chris Christie, because he accepted Obama’s very competent assistance after Hurricane Sandy, instead of luring him into the New Jersey swamps and hitting him with a shovel like a good Republican.
The truth is Mitt Romney cost Mitt Romney by failing to get as many votes as his opponent.
Reading that article it seems there was an important piece of context missing. The purpose of Reid’s claim wasn’t so much to convince the voters of the falsehood that Romney never paid taxes it was to shame him into releasing his tax returns (which, given he refused to release them, would, presumably be damaging to him in some way) in order to set the record straight. Basically he was asking the voters to draw adverse inferences from Romney’s lack of forthrightness. Compared to the swift boat campaign or Obama Birth certificate this was practically saintly.
This. The current USSC will be around for a long time and McConnell is the reason for it.
My MAGA boss came to work the other day and almost the minute he walked in the door, he said “You must be gleeful with the verdict of almost 400 million.” He’s known me for 2 and 1/2 years and still doesn’t know me well enough to know how wrong that opinion is. I don’t know what he’s listening to that gives him such a low opinion of liberals in this way.
He seemed surprised when I told him no, I’m not gleeful at all. I just want trump to go away. That’s all, just go away so we can try to fix the damage he’s inflicted on the country I still love. At this point, I’d settle for that
Kevin Drum provides a nice chart showing Mitch’s legacy.
That’s from Josh Marshall, who’s old enough to remember that McConnell’s real genius was not in breaking a single norm a single time, but in pioneering norm breaking as a governing strategy. He was the one who inherited scattered efforts from his predecessors and transformed them into a single brilliant insight: that the Senate operated on lots of traditions that were just that—traditions. Not rules, not laws, and they could be broken by simply realizing there was nothing to stop you.
This is plainest to see in McConnell’s adoption of the routine filibuster. He wasn’t the first, but he was the one who put the pieces together and realized you didn’t have to pick and choose bills to filibuster. You could just filibuster them all:
But that’s not all…
They are, however, Reaganist justices and not Trump justices and Reaganists aren’t so removed from the Republican justices that passed Roe v Wade.
The Trump justices are still to come - if we presume that MAGA will be able to take over the Senate - but I’m slightly skeptical that, that will occur. I’m not confident, but I’m fairly hopeful that the Senate is going to hold out. Ain’t no one want to become the new House of Representatives.
???
Except for that they disfuckingmantled it, sure.
But you said, and I quote,
so in a board as heavily liberal as this one there should be dozens, if not hundreds of posts in the Smart Democrat Idea of the Day thread. Dig some up and bring them here.