The unbelievable irony of Mitch McConnell voting to acquit Donald Trump and then getting up a few minutes later and reiterating the Democrats’ case as to why Trump is guilty, will surely live in the annals of American rhetoric as a case in wonder. I’m sure that school children of the future, listening to the speech and then finding out McConnell voted to acquit Trump will not get it at first, because the only way to “get it” is to understand how corrupt and convoluted the politics of this era are.
Mitch McConnell’s priorities are pared down to basics at this point. It’s pretty obvious that as much as he detests Trump he had no intention of voting to convict him, because to do so would have meant outrage and clamors for his resignation, ala Liz Cheney. McConnell has no stomach for that. Plus, at 78, he’s been a fat cat Republican in the top seat for a long time and he has no intention of relinquishing it. His only interest at this point is clawing back one senate seat, so that the Republicans have 51 senators and he’s back in the driver’s seat as majority leader. To that end, McConnell is focused on getting rid of the Trump riff raff and getting people on the ballot that are electable. And therein lies the rub. Politico:
McConnell made clear in a Saturday evening interview that he will not hesitate to wade into future primary races if a Trump-backed candidate — like, say, Kelli Ward in Arizona or the former president’s daughter-in-law Lara in North Carolina — threatens his bid to retake the majority.
“My goal is, in every way possible, to have nominees representing the Republican Party who can win in November,” McConnell said by telephone. “Some of them may be people the former president likes. Some of them may not be. The only thing I care about is electability.”
The Kentuckian made clear that “I’m not predicting the president would support people who couldn’t win. But I do think electability — not who supports who — is the critical point.”
And of course this clashes with Trump’s mobster mentality way of operating. He’s out to avenge himself on senators who have opposed him in the past. John Thune is Exhibit “A.”
“To the degree that there’s a titular leader for the party,” it’s McConnell, said GOP whip Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). Trump has threatened Thune with a primary challenge, making the South Dakotan one of several in McConnell’s conference who could face Trump-inspired challenges in deep-red states.
But though McConnell excoriated Trump on Saturday for a “disgraceful dereliction of duty” during the Jan. 6 insurrection, afterward he quickly reverted to type and avoided the former president’s controversies. During the interview, McConnell declined to address Democratic criticisms that his acquittal/condemnation move was an attempt to have it both ways when it comes to Trump.
And he did not elaborate on Saturday comments that appeared to hint Trump may face criminal prosecution.
“I’ve said all I need to say about that,” was where McConnell left it.
McConnell also declined to say if, should Trump seek the White House in 2024, he would stand in opposition: “I’m focused on ‘22.”
So who will prevail in 2022, the old school GOP or the new QAnon/MAGA faction of the party? McConnell has already made it clear how he feels about “loony conspiracy theories.” That will depend in part on what happens to Trump and the civil and criminal proceedings that he’ll face now that the second impeachment trial has been concluded.
Meanwhile, McConnell has to deal not only with the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene but with Matt Gaetz, who called him, a member of the “establishment” who is trying to “screw our fellow Americans for generations.” It’s going to be a stranger two years than usual, but then you know that there was no other way, this being either the post-Trump era, or the interregnum between two Trump terms, which is how he’s pitching it to the base. QAnon, Parler and continued lies are the new normal.
I hope the GQP splinters into many pieces.
It’s well known that if Republicans didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all, Moscow Mitch exemplifies this.
But it doesn’t matter, the Republicans are a house divided, while they are, they can’t oppose the Democratic Party’s new and essential agenda. This includes bringing about a new paradigm where lies are not the new normal.
Trump’s divisiveness works against him, and as you point out, he’s shortly to spend a long time in court. This will further expose new information of his misdeeds and criminal behavior, further discrediting the right and far right party the Republicans have become.
He won’t be leading the GQP in the Senate in 2022 or after, no matter what his official title is. He’ll have to deal with the idjits like Hawley and the sucker-fish like Lindsey.
Thanks, Ursula, this is really entertainment to me. The GOP is going after each other, like hammerhead sharks. Their numbers are diminishing and citizens are, on the whole, fed up with them.
Eh, McConnell will stick with ANYONE who’ll keep him in power. We ALL saw that back in 2010 when the Tea Party threatened to do the same thing as Trump and QAnon idiots have done for the past 4 years. I mean, when EXACTLY did McConnell oppose a single thing that Trump (essentially) dictated? If McConnell were truly serious about “opposing” Trump, we would’ve seen that during LAST YEAR’S impeachment. Instead, McConnell made sure to rig the rules to keep the impeachment proceedings from doing anything that would’ve really affected Trump; McConnell made sure the impeachment was seen (at least by the GOP faithful) as nothing but a partisan hack job with no real merit.
And, of course, McConnell changed HIS OWN RULE to make sure Barrett got on the court just WEEKS before election day–that “rule” he imposed in 2016 after Scalia died 9 months before the presidential election was that “the people should have some say when a Supreme Court judge dies before an election” but, of course, when RBG died a little over a month before the presidential election, suddenly the *rule* became little more than a “suggested but not mandatory course of action.” (I doubt that McConnell could’ve ever imagined that Barrett would’ve been so willing to rule against Trump in the handful of SCOTUS post-election rulings that got that far.)
As I mentioned before, when the Tea Party threatened to primary incumbent GOPers whom they thought were too “soft” (ie, “willing to work with ‘Demon-crats'”) and threatened to cut ties with the GOP if the Party didn’t give in to their demands, McConnell and the rest of the Party leadership caved because they knew a real “Tea Party” on the ballot would split conservative voters, letting Democrats get some potential upset wins and the GOP would never gain power again; it was a bit of a given that the Dems would lose some House and Senate seats in 2010 (the President’s party typically loses seats in mid-term elections) but I don’t think many analysts expected what happened that November.