Will The Elderly, Conflicted, Beleagured McConnell Crack Up Under All The Stress?

Predictably, over the weekend the Louisville Courier-Journal columnists were all buzzing over Kentucky's mega-high profile Senate campaign. Old, steeped in corruption and wily, Mitch McConnell, is facing a mainstream Democrat, Alison Lundergan Grimes, and, in the GOP primary, a very credible Tea Party candidate, Matt Bevin. Al Cross made the point that McConnell failed his first test for reelection-- keeping Bevin from running against him.

Bevin’s campaign is likely to help the campaign of McConnell’s likely Democratic challenger, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. It will undermine McConnell among his Republican base, force him to run two campaigns at once and walk a narrower path between his right wing and the centrist voters he needs, and put other pitfalls in his path to a sixth term.

That is why McConnell’s prime directive was to avoid a credible challenge in the primary. From all indications, he has failed.

Bevin passed his first big test in his initial announcement in the state Capitol rotunda Wednesday. He communicated effectively, made a case for himself and against McConnell, had a dozen good applause lines and sound bites, dealt with reporters’ questions well, and looked nothing like the political newcomer that he is. He is an attractive candidate with money, and so far that equals credibility.

We don’t know how much of his own money Bevin can put into his campaign, beyond the initial round of TV ads he’s running, but it’s safe to assume that he will attract contributions from tea party supporters all over the country, because this race will be the closest thing to a national election in 2014. He will probably raise more money from non-Kentuckians than from people inside the state, particularly if he wins endorsements from the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund, which said last week they were open to supporting him. He cast his campaign as the start of “an American renaissance” that will sweep the country: “We the people have come to take our nation back.”

McConnell had catered to that hard core, obstructionist, and often racist, base for the past two years. He's managed to drive down his own approval ratings among moderates and independents in the hope-- now shattered, that he would make up for it by making the far right love him. Even though he catered to their every crazy whim, they see him as a condescending Establishment crook and instead of love, they have nothing but contempt for him. As Cross pointed out, McConnell hired Rand Paul's "Paul’s campaign manager and nephew, Jesse Benton, to run his campaign and secured endorsements from Paul and some local and national tea party leaders, but Wednesday Bevin was introduced by Jenean Hampton, chair of the tea party group in Paul’s hometown, Bowling Green." McConnell isn't doing himself any good by blatantly lying about Bevin is his campaign ad blitz. People already view McConnell as a sleazy campaign who plays fast and loose with the facts. Turning those tactics against another Republican isn't something likely to make him more popular.

Some fresh ammunition is coming Bevin’s way. McConnell appears unlikely to sign on to the demand from Paul and other Senate conservatives that any budget deal this fall de-fund Obamacare, which Bevin said in his announcement should be ended “no matter what it takes.” More mainstream Republicans realize that the proposed tactic would get them blamed for a government shutdown.

The budget-and-debt discussions include talk about higher taxes from Arizona Sen. John McCain, who brokered the recent Senate filibuster deal that McConnell apparently feared to embrace because of pressure from his right wing. If McConnell is left standing on the sidelines again, it could undercut his best bipartisan argument, that Kentucky needs to keep a seat in the Senate’s front row. Both Bevin and Grimes could argue that Republicans might not even re-elect McConnell as leader if Kentuckians re-elect him to the Senate.

It’s hard to beat a party leader, but rarely does one get the whipsawing that McConnell is about to get.

That whipsaw action was also the focus of Jim Carroll's analysis, who is already comparing McConnell to Establishment Republicans who lost reelection bids because of Tea Party challengers, like Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Bob Bennett (R-IN). "Instead of trying to define Grimes before she gets very far," writes Carroll, "McConnell now must shift a considerable part of his focus into dealing with a party insurgency that could leave him battered and bruised for the general election, assuming he is not dethroned."

[Rand] Paul, himself a tea party upstart who defeated McConnell’s candidate, Trey Grayson, in the 2010 GOP Senate primary, is stepping carefully. He has no good choices: Go against McConnell and rupture the relationship they have built, or attack Bevin and make a shambles of many of the tea party alliances he would count on to help him in a 2016 White House bid, should he decide to make one.

...Some political observers saw the recent deal over avoiding a change in Senate rules on votes for executive branch nominees as a milestone. Instead of McConnell taking the credit for working out an agreement with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., it was the old maverick himself, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who did.

...[S]ome GOP insiders were whispering that some of McConnell’s fellow Republicans were weary of the Kentuckian’s obstruction tactics and took matters into their own hands. The McConnell camp considers this preposterous and merely Democratic trouble-making.

In any case, another rogue wave is coming: Some tea party senators and other conservatives, led by Utah’s Mike Lee and including Paul and Florida’s Marco Rubio, are circulating a letter pledging to oppose any spending measure that funds the president’s health care reform law.

...Congress is headed for renewed conflict in the fall over spending. Without an agreement on a stopgap bill to keep the government running, it would shut down most functions and services.

McConnell, who has been a fierce opponent of President Barack Obama’s health care law and recently has spoken out against it almost every day the Senate has been in session, is not on the Lee letter. Neither are some other key Republicans, including McCain.

“I’ve seen the movie before: Congress never wins,” McCain said last week. “They’re going to shut down the Grand Canyon; we start hearing from our voters.”

We asked McConnell’s office why he did not sign the letter. Spokesman Don Stewart emphasized all Senate Republicans want to repeal the health care law, adding that McConnell is a co-sponsor of a bill to defund it and a bill to repeal it. But he didn’t say why McConnell stayed off the letter. Even without the Obama health care law, the White House and congressional Republicans appear to be looking at another stalemate over spending levels and what to do about continuing the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester.

That’s not all. Sometime later in the fall, the federal government will reach the limit of its borrowing authority, requiring another increase in the debt ceiling. Many GOP lawmakers want a fight over that.

If McConnell sides with the hard-liners on the health care law and spending, threatening a government shutdown, he plays into the Democratic narrative that he is an obstructionist. If he doesn’t go along-- or if he gets involved in a deal to avert a shutdown-- he opens himself to attacks from the tea party that he is betraying conservative principles.

The conservative Club for Growth last week called on McConnell to sign the Lee letter. That organization, by the way, is mulling whether it will support Bevin and others who are taking on GOP incumbents. The club is headed by former Rep. Chris Chocola, R-Ind.

Another group, the centrist Main Street Advocacy Fund, is publicly challenging the club. The fund’s president, former Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, called the Club for Growth “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

The ideological hurricane in the GOP is intensifying. McConnell is engulfed in it.

If the government is forced to shut down, McConnell will get the blame for every missed Social Security check, every furloughed job and every mishap that takes place until Congress backs down. He's working hard to get the more mainstream senators who signed the Lee letter to withdraw their names. Several of his allies, like Mark Kirk, Richard Burr and Kelly Ayotte, already have. If the Lee effort fails, Tea Party stalwarts will blame McConnell. He's in trouble no matter what happens. Two far right GOP outfits, the United Kentucky Tea Party coalition and the Madison Project PAC, has already endorsed Bevin against McConnell.

Madison Project spokesman Daniel Horowtiz says the group is proud to endorse Bevin mainly because of his background as an entrepreneur. The group isn't sparring McConnell any criticism, however.

"After 28 years in the Senate and over 10 years in leadership, Senator Mitch McConnell has become the embodiment of stale moss-covered leadership. It's not just his votes for Democrat proposals, such open borders, bailouts, fiscal cliff tax hikes, debt limit increases, green energy stimulus, and funding for Obamacare, it is that fact that McConnell has refused to use his leadership role to fight for conservatives." he says.

..."On so many major legislative battles that are important to conservatives, McConnell has refused to fight and remained ambiguous about his own position until he felt a clear signal from his political weather vane," says Horowitz. "His behavior during the amnesty fight is a consummate example of McConnell following from behind instead of leading from the front."