In several past articles, I have referred to GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as Gollum, the tragic character from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, a sad, pathetic creature so corrupted by the power of the ring he once possessed, that he is incapable of coherent thought.
I was right. Since January, McConnell has been gifted with an ally he never could have expected, a Democratic Senator so bedazzled by the fantasy of Senate bipartisanship, that he was willing to sell out his own side to chase that pot at the end of the rainbow. And now, Gollum Mitch is fucking his lifeline up.
It seemed for a while that Moscow Mitch was still tuned into reality. He told his GOP caucus to treat West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema like lucky winners at the Vegas tables. Treat them like rubes, give them seats at the ringside schmuck tables at the best shows, and keep luring their dumb asses right back into the casino again. And Manchin and Sinema were lapping that shit up like a couple of kittens with a pint of cream.
But then McConnell blew it. He misread Manchin. Manchin honestly believes in bipartisanship in the Senate. And for his fealty, all Manchin wanted was the bipartisan committee to investigate the 1/06 insurrection. And it was something easily within McConnell’s power to give him, multiple GOP Senators supported the legislation. And instead McConnell actively whipped votes against the formation of the commission. And the scales started falling from Manchin’s eyes.
Look, Manchin crawled way far out on a branch, and that branch is out over the Grand Canyon. And he’s starting to hear cracking noises. Personally, I think that the Bishop Barber’s Moral Monday march in Manchin’s home state had an effect on him. Manchin is starting to realize that he is working against the wishes of the people he is going to need in 2024.
So Manchin is starting to crawl back from that branch to the bole of the tree. In a taped conversation obtained by The Intercept, Manchin told GOP Senator Roy Blount that he was going to need to see GOP support, or he was open to reforming the filibuster. His first threat was dropping the cloture vote from 60 to 55 votes. This would give the Democrats a second chance to introduce the legislation to appoint a bipartisan 1/06 commission, which got 66 votes the last time around. If that fails, it would be a sign to Manchin of GOP obstruction. He also seems to support reforming the filibuster to an actual talking filibuster, which requires a minimum of 40 members of the minority party to be present in the chamber at all times. Once that number drops, the Senate Majority Leader may immediately call for a vote on the bill. This would be the kiss of death for the filibuster for a lazy GOP.
Manchin is firing howitzer shots across McConnell’s bow that if he wants to continue to promote bipartisanship, he is going to have to put his money where his mouth is. Manchin went all in by proposing changes to the For the People Act that he could support, and demanding GOP support. And Mitch McConnell walked up to the microphones and pissed all over it.
Mitch McConnell will kill the GOP Senate. He is so obsessed with his own power that he doesn’t realize that it has limitations. Manchin has been getting hammered by members of his own caucus, and now the Bishop Barber has shown him that his own constituents are pissed off at him. The smart move for McConnell would be to let Manchin have his way on the 1/06 commission, and seriously meet the Democrats in the middle on the infrastructure bill, which would make his vulnerable Senators look good. But McConnell will settle for nothing less than His Preciousssssss. Don’t touch that dial.
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I hope you have nailed it. I am more optimistic than I’ve been in a while.
I agree, the Dork Turtle has free-wheeled through multi-levels of common sense and the reality button remains dusty and unused … The Murf has nailed that picture, it is now back on Manchin to get a spine and we will once again be able to progress into a future with a secure and robust grid and web presence …
All those cuts insisted by the GOP are going to stop or injure many GOOD plans out there, we need to keep the pressure on our Congress critters to advance much further …
If Bishop Barber had an effect that would be a wonderful aspect of the story…Bishop Barber is what a true American hero looks like.
On the Gollum allegory…I have to be that guy that steps in to geeksplain, lol. Gollum, as we all know, was originally a river Hobbit named Sméagol, who was affected by the one ring when his friend discovered it. Sméagol murdered his friend in an initial act of moral corruption that sealed his fate…the one ring then spent decades twisting him into Gollum.
Gollum is a tragic character, someone who was inherently good until this evil artifact came along and corrupted him. He also serves as an evil alter ego to Frodo…a representation of what Frodo would become if he succumbed to the ring’s temptation. Those both make the McConnell analogy problematic. Was McConnell ever a good person? I’m skeptical. There is a big difference in Tolkien’s world whether someone is evil because of their own moral failings, or corrupted by something more powerful than they can withstand.
But perhaps the most problematic issue would be that Gollum is eventually shown to not only been the tool of the most evil force in Middle Earth – someone manipulated to bring the one ring back to Sauron – he was also an agent of the most divine force in Middle Earth. When he is essential in destroying the ring, we understand that although his story is tragic and twisted, this was God’s plan all along, and that even those guilty of great evil can be redeemed as heroes.
McConnell is probably more comparable to the Nazgul Witch King, who was once a powerful man who craved power, was immediately corrupted by a ring of power and then served evil relentlessly until he was killed by a woman.
I see no act of moral will in Gollum’s part in the Ring’s destruction. Instead, I would remind us of the saying “Everyone serves God; it makes no difference to him. But it makes a difference to us whether we serve him like Judas or like John.” I see Gollum’s death as serving God like Judas.
I also don’t see Smeagol as having been all that innocent before the Ring showed up. But that really is not made clear, so you could well be correct on that.
I really enjoyed your analysis. It opened up some pretty unused pathways in this tiring brain. Thanks,
What this really comes down to, Murf, is that McConnell has lost his touch, period. My mom and I talk about this quite a lot and we both agree that he’s never been the same since he broke his shoulder in that fall. He’s been trying to act “as if” while the leadership of his caucus gradually disintegrates. It’s the move of a gambler with an increasingly weaker hand who can’t bring himself to walk away from the table.
I am getting really tired of the Manchin narrative that he is “selling out his own side.” Is that what Chreney and Romney did? No one will address the real questions. Manchin supports the goal of the bill, just not that particular bill. He has yet to clearly and coherently articulate why, but other analysts say the bill is flawed. The New York Times analysis says it is full of extraneous details designed to pander to each and every faction of the Democratic coalition (as if merely protecting the right to vote is not motivation enough). Public polling may ask people if they support the bill, and like Manchin, they support the goals of the bill. However they, like most of us have very little understanding of the particulars of the bill itself. Furthermore, Manchin has proposed a bill that apparently corrects the For the People Act’s flaws.
We need analysis that is far deeper than the simplistic “Manchin won’t toe the party line”. Manchin has said he supports reauthorization of the seminal Voting Rights Acts and passage of the John Lewis Act. Why not go ahead then and bring both of those up for a vote? The very real possibility that the GOP will not allow them to come to a vote is not an argument, because the same applies to the For the People Act. So the real question is whether the FTP Act is flawed and those other two options are better, and if so, then fight for those other two options. Another question no one is addressing is whether Dems really want to bequeath a no-filibuster Senate to the GOP to use the next time they have the majority.
Manchin is owned by Koch and friends and really want the cover of republicans voting with him. He is seeing his constituents wanting what he is withholding
Yet more baseless speculation on his motivations rather than addressing the actual questions.
I think praying with the moral majority will unknot the unknown. I trust Bishop Barber more than anyone else in this entanglement.