Al Cross Compares Mitch McConnell To "Popeye". Read More Below.
Mitch McConnell shifts with the tide on earmarks
By Al Cross
It was like seeing Popeye swear off spinach.
There was Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, standing at the minority leader's lectern in the well of the U.S. Senate last Monday, supporting a ban on budget earmarks — another type of green that was central to his re-election two years ago, and one that he had defended days earlier.
It was the latest step in the evolution of a man who started his political life on the left side of the Republican Party, which has now all but disappeared, and who has now embraced one of the pet causes of the tea party, an insurgency that is pushing him and his party to the right.
It may turn out to be too far to the right for the Republican Party's own good, but at this point the GOP's direction for the next two years is being set, and McConnell risked being out of step and putting his leader's job at risk.
Ten days ago, only 15 of the 47 Republican senators and senators-elect favored an earmark ban. Earmark supporters had about that many votes, or fewer, with a plurality undecided. The tide appeared to turn last weekend, when many senators were in their home states. They doubtless heard from constituents stirred up by conservative talk radio, blogs and activist groups like the Tea Party Patriots, which says it has an e-mail list with 134,000 names.
“I've talked with my members. I've listened to them,” McConnell said Monday. “Above all, I have listened to my constituents.”
If McConnell had remained a defender of earmarks, it would have been harder for him to lead his caucus, a task akin to herding cats, made even more difficult by tea party pressure and the addition of 13 new members. He would have become a target within his own party, endangering his prospects of being re-elected leader after the 2012 elections and achieving his longtime goal of leading a Republican majority.
That goal is within reach. While the presidential election will make turnout larger and probably more liberal than this year's, about two-thirds of the Senate seats on the 2012 ballot are held by Democrats. Many are in states President Obama is unlikely to carry, so Republicans could pick up the four seats they need to regain control of the Senate, even if Obama is re-elected. And if he is not, the Senate is likely to go Republican.
But the calculations for 2012 also worry some Republican senators. If they aren't seen as sufficiently conservative, they could draw intraparty opposition from the right and be defeated for re-nomination, as McConnell's good friend, Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah, was at his party's state convention, and as Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was in a primary election. (She apparently won re-election this month as a write-in, but called it “a miracle.”) Various tea party organizations seem ready to stay active to hold Republicans' feet to the fire from now until the 2012 elections. This is a bunch that brooks no compromises, and that has raised the fear factor among GOP officeholders.
If McConnell was to be defeated for re-election as leader in 2012, that would damage his 2014 campaign in Kentucky for a sixth term. With no leadership job and no earmarks, he would be a Popeye without big biceps.
McConnell has never built the personal following that was the hallmark of his mentor, John Sherman Cooper, and his Democratic nemesis, Wendell Ford. His personal standing with Kentucky voters probably fell again after this month's election, thanks to reports that his No. 1 goal in the new Congress would be Obama's defeat and that he asked then-President George W. Bush to bring home some troops from Iraq in the fall of 2006 to help their party keep control of Congress, where McConnell was in line to become majority leader.
McConnell's remark about Obama was often misrepresented; he told the National Journal (emphasis added), “Our single biggest political goal is to give our nominee for president the maximum opportunity to be successful.”
But the revelation about Iraq, in Bush's new book, clearly showed him to be hypocritical and self-serving on an issue of national security. In the same month he beseeched Bush, he said Democratic leaders who asked the president for a “phased redeployment” of troops from Iraq were endorsing “cutting and running.”
Bush also wrote that McConnell “has a sharp political nose,” and it seems the senator is following the sarcastic adage, “I must hurry and catch up with the others, for I am their leader.”
He did it a second time last week, announcing that he now opposes an omnibus budget bill that was being negotiated with his support and influence.
But as he moves to the right in Washington, McConnell can look to Kentucky and see a state that is moving in the same direction, as indicated by this month's election results. I wrote a few months ago that Rand Paul, in opposing earmarks, was asking voters to change the job description of U.S. senator from Kentucky. Now it seems they have, and McConnell seems to be planning his 2014 job review accordingly.
Our senior senator has been able to overcome his image as a coldly calculating, hyperpartisan, self-serving politician by bringing Kentucky interests what they wanted and needed.
Come 2014, Popeye will be short on spinach. He may figure from this month's voting that his constituents also want a different diet.
Al Cross, former Courier-Journal political writer, is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky. His e-mail address is al.cross@uky.edu. His views are his own, not those of the University of Kentucky.
By Al Cross
It was like seeing Popeye swear off spinach.
There was Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, standing at the minority leader's lectern in the well of the U.S. Senate last Monday, supporting a ban on budget earmarks — another type of green that was central to his re-election two years ago, and one that he had defended days earlier.
It was the latest step in the evolution of a man who started his political life on the left side of the Republican Party, which has now all but disappeared, and who has now embraced one of the pet causes of the tea party, an insurgency that is pushing him and his party to the right.
It may turn out to be too far to the right for the Republican Party's own good, but at this point the GOP's direction for the next two years is being set, and McConnell risked being out of step and putting his leader's job at risk.
Ten days ago, only 15 of the 47 Republican senators and senators-elect favored an earmark ban. Earmark supporters had about that many votes, or fewer, with a plurality undecided. The tide appeared to turn last weekend, when many senators were in their home states. They doubtless heard from constituents stirred up by conservative talk radio, blogs and activist groups like the Tea Party Patriots, which says it has an e-mail list with 134,000 names.
“I've talked with my members. I've listened to them,” McConnell said Monday. “Above all, I have listened to my constituents.”
If McConnell had remained a defender of earmarks, it would have been harder for him to lead his caucus, a task akin to herding cats, made even more difficult by tea party pressure and the addition of 13 new members. He would have become a target within his own party, endangering his prospects of being re-elected leader after the 2012 elections and achieving his longtime goal of leading a Republican majority.
That goal is within reach. While the presidential election will make turnout larger and probably more liberal than this year's, about two-thirds of the Senate seats on the 2012 ballot are held by Democrats. Many are in states President Obama is unlikely to carry, so Republicans could pick up the four seats they need to regain control of the Senate, even if Obama is re-elected. And if he is not, the Senate is likely to go Republican.
But the calculations for 2012 also worry some Republican senators. If they aren't seen as sufficiently conservative, they could draw intraparty opposition from the right and be defeated for re-nomination, as McConnell's good friend, Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah, was at his party's state convention, and as Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was in a primary election. (She apparently won re-election this month as a write-in, but called it “a miracle.”) Various tea party organizations seem ready to stay active to hold Republicans' feet to the fire from now until the 2012 elections. This is a bunch that brooks no compromises, and that has raised the fear factor among GOP officeholders.
If McConnell was to be defeated for re-election as leader in 2012, that would damage his 2014 campaign in Kentucky for a sixth term. With no leadership job and no earmarks, he would be a Popeye without big biceps.
McConnell has never built the personal following that was the hallmark of his mentor, John Sherman Cooper, and his Democratic nemesis, Wendell Ford. His personal standing with Kentucky voters probably fell again after this month's election, thanks to reports that his No. 1 goal in the new Congress would be Obama's defeat and that he asked then-President George W. Bush to bring home some troops from Iraq in the fall of 2006 to help their party keep control of Congress, where McConnell was in line to become majority leader.
McConnell's remark about Obama was often misrepresented; he told the National Journal (emphasis added), “Our single biggest political goal is to give our nominee for president the maximum opportunity to be successful.”
But the revelation about Iraq, in Bush's new book, clearly showed him to be hypocritical and self-serving on an issue of national security. In the same month he beseeched Bush, he said Democratic leaders who asked the president for a “phased redeployment” of troops from Iraq were endorsing “cutting and running.”
Bush also wrote that McConnell “has a sharp political nose,” and it seems the senator is following the sarcastic adage, “I must hurry and catch up with the others, for I am their leader.”
He did it a second time last week, announcing that he now opposes an omnibus budget bill that was being negotiated with his support and influence.
But as he moves to the right in Washington, McConnell can look to Kentucky and see a state that is moving in the same direction, as indicated by this month's election results. I wrote a few months ago that Rand Paul, in opposing earmarks, was asking voters to change the job description of U.S. senator from Kentucky. Now it seems they have, and McConnell seems to be planning his 2014 job review accordingly.
Our senior senator has been able to overcome his image as a coldly calculating, hyperpartisan, self-serving politician by bringing Kentucky interests what they wanted and needed.
Come 2014, Popeye will be short on spinach. He may figure from this month's voting that his constituents also want a different diet.
Al Cross, former Courier-Journal political writer, is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky. His e-mail address is al.cross@uky.edu. His views are his own, not those of the University of Kentucky.
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