What Drives Mitch McConnell? A Conscienceless, Near-Cartoonish Pursuit of Power

by Thomas Neuburger

For all the damage he’s inflicted on American democracy, for all the political corpses he’s left in his wake, Mitch McConnell has never betrayed an ounce of shame.
—Robert Moser, Rolling Stone

Mitch McConnell is a unique individual in the modern political world.

Most politicians are filled with a mix of fevered desires, flattering self-projections, a bittersweet mashup of idealistic regret and sad bows to "practicality," naked ego and the many attractive perks of the "Oh It's You, Senator" club (search on "you get it all the time") — and especially lots and lots of money. (I must add though that their vast corruption is vastly under-compensated, a point I've many times; the money-corrupted among them need a much better agent.)

It's a rare politician who simply wants power and power alone, power for its own sake, power unalloyed by other human desires. Mitch McConnell, like Rupert Murdoch and the real Mayor Daley (Richard J.) before him, is such a man.

At least that's the assessment of Dan Froomkin, writing at his site Press Watch:

Three things the media should be telling you about Mitch McConnell

McConnell’s motivations are essential context for a public trying to understand what’s going on in the Senate – and specifically, why McConnell is blocking Democratic attempts to introduce evidence that wasn’t available to the House.

The good news is that Mitch McConnell is not a hard guy to figure out. Indeed, countless, extensive profiles of him have concluded the same thing: that he is singularly uncomplicated. His only ideology is power. ...

[T]here is no appealing to reason with Mitch McConnell. There is no appealing to precedent, or to a sense of history. There is no appealing to the separation of powers, the role of Congress, or the sanctity of the Senate. There is certainly no appealing to the idea of country or the Constitution over party.

If it doesn’t help Republicans get elected, he’s not interested.

Here are three of the things reporters know about McConnell, but routinely fail to tell their readers and viewers...

Those three things are these:

1. Since money in politics is the chief agent of corruption, and Republican corruption means the acquisition of power for its own sake — what ever you think of Democrats, and I don't think much of them these days, Republicans aren't called "authoritarian" and "fascist" for no reason — "the only issue that McConnell really cares about is opposing any limits to money in politics."

Quoting Alex Parene:

Mitch McConnell is the great avatar of the decades-long enclosure of our public life by money. He does not offer a stirring vision of conservative national greatness or even ends-justify-the-means rationales for Senate horse-trading ... In Mitchworld, you simply pay—and pay, and pay—to play.

And:

Being a Senate majority leader who doesn’t care about almost any particular outcome to any particular political issue not directly related to making sure your funders can fund you actually seems to take quite a bit of pressure off, job performance–wise.

A simple, uncomplicated life. When you want exactly and only one thing, distraction is never an issue.

2. McConnell has "ruined the Senate," and that's just fine with him.

As Froomkin writes, "McConnell has dramatically transformed the U.S. Senate, from a place that once relied heavily on tradition and precedent and was less partisan and more deliberative than the House, into a slaughterhouse for any legislation that might hurt his donor pool."

But that's just one way he's damaged the body he's part of. The other way is to empower a radical judiciary that is more and more taking power away from the legislature, including the Senate, and arrogating to itself decisions the Founders meant the people to decide.

According to Charles Homans, "In the coming years, battles over voting rights, health care, abortion, regulation and campaign finance, among other areas, are less likely to be decided in Congress than in the nation’s courthouses. In effect, McConnell has become a master of the Senate by figuring out how to route the Republican agenda around it."

Using the Senate to diminish the Senate — that's our Mitch.

3. The simplicity of his wickedness renders him almost cartoonish.

Robert Moser (also quoted above), writes of McConnell, "like the president he now so faithfully serves, McConnell has always exuded a sense of pride in the lengths to which he’s gone to achieve his ambitions and infuriate his enemies."

And James Zengerle noted in Politico, "While most politicians desperately want to be liked, McConnell has relished—and cultivated—his reputation as a villain. After all, he achieved his iron-fisted grip on the politics of his home state and his fractious party on Capitol Hill through discipline, cunning and, oftentimes, fear. ... [A]t the moments that have found him happiest—winning elections, blocking bills, denying the sheen of bipartisanship to President Barack Obama—he has radiated not joy but menace."

Yet as amusing as cartoon villainy is to contemplate, this last point should not be dwelt on.

McConnell may well be the most dangerous man in politics today, not just because of his terrible goals — the acquisition of total power for a party that hosts the worse authoritarians in the country — but also because not an ounce of conscience pulls him back from the brink of his most terrible deeds.

He not only fails to fear that brink; he relishes finding it.

If I could choose just two politicians to remove immediately and forever from office, from a list that includes such dark angels as Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, the murderous Mohammed bin Salman, our own progressive-hating Chuck Schumer and his House counterpart (yes, even her) and many more like them — I just might choose to eliminate Mitch McConnell. Twice.
 
 

"If Trump were more rational and more competent, he might have a chance of destroying our democracy" (George Packer)

-- from the Resources for Life blog

by Ken

The question of President Trump's mental fitness for the office dates back at least to some of his wilder ravings during the campaign, and less than a month into his tenure is being discussed more widely. As noted, the above graphic, for example, is filched from a January 28 post of that title by Gregory Johnson on the Resources for Life blog.

Now, in a "Comment" piece in the February 27 New Yorker, "Holding Trump Accountable," George Packer offers a stark portrait of our moment in time, proceeding from the proposition that, a month into his tenure,

Donald Trump has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties. The disability isn’t laziness or inattention. It expresses itself in paranoid rants, non-stop feuds carried out in public, and impulsive acts that can only damage his government and himself. Last week, at a White House press conference, the President behaved like the unhinged leader of an unstable and barely democratic republic.

George gives a graphic portrayal of a White House "isolate[d] in power struggles" and an administration "in nearly open revolt," and foreign leaders looking on either:

• "with disbelieving alarm":

Allies such as Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau, of Canada, and Shinzo Abe, of Japan, flatter the President in order to avoid the fate of Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull, whom Trump first berated and then hung up on during their get-to-know-you phone call."

• or "with calculating interest":

Vladimir Putin is already testing Trump, by sending Russian fighter jets to buzz a U.S. Navy ship. Xi Jinping is positioning China to fill the void in the Pacific Rim which will be left by Trump’s policy of America First. Pragmatists in Iran are trying to judge whether the new American government can be counted on to act rationally—exactly what U.S. officials always wondered about the fractured leadership of the Islamic Republic.

GEORGE BEGAN HIS PIECE OUTLINING A KNOWN
REMEDY: SECTION 4 OF THE 25TH AMENDMENT

As George explains, Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, which has still never been used (though he notes that the new team appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987, on the advice of the outgoing team, checked it out), "empowers the Vice-President, along with 'a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide,' to declare the President unfit and to install the Vice-President as Acting President."

The blurb atop George's piece reads: "After a month in office, [President Trump] has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties. But the only people with real leverage over him won’t use it." And after setting forth the current situation, George says starkly: "It won’t get better."

The notion that, at some point, Trump would start behaving “Presidential” was always a fantasy that has the truth backward: the pressure of the Presidency is making him worse. He’s insulated by sycophants and by family members, and he can still ride a long way on his popular following. Though the surge of civic opposition, the independence of the courts, and the reinvigoration of the press are heartening, the only real leverage over Trump lies in the hands of Republicans. But Section 4 won’t be invoked. Vice-President Mike Pence is not going to face the truth in the private back room of a Washington restaurant with Secretaries Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, and Wilbur Ross, or in the offices of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Republican leaders have opted instead for unconstrained power.

They need Trump to pass their agenda of rewriting the tax code in favor of the rich and of gutting regulations that protect the public and the planet—an agenda that a majority of Americans never supported—so they are looking the other way. Even the prospect of Russian influence over our elections and our government leaves these American patriots unmoved. Senator John Cornyn, of Texas, the Republican whip, made it plain: Trump can go on being Trump “as long as we’re able to get things done.” Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky, explained, “We’ll never even get started with doing the things we need to do, like repealing Obamacare, if we’re spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans.”

The growing Russian scandal will challenge the willingness of the Party to hold the President accountable. So far, the situation is not encouraging. The heads of the key House and Senate committees are partisans who are doing as little as possible to expose corruption and possible treason in the White House. The few critical Republican voices—Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins, and Representative Mark Sanford—are ineffective. Perhaps Party leaders are privately searching their souls; perhaps, as with the old Bolshevik Rubashov, in Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” ideology and power have rendered them incapable of independent moral judgment. Whatever the case, history won’t be kind to them.

An authoritarian and erratic leader, a chaotic Presidency, a supine legislature, a resistant permanent bureaucracy, street demonstrations, fear abroad: this is what illiberal regimes look like. If Trump were more rational and more competent, he might have a chance of destroying our democracy.

Obviously if those Republicans George accuses of delinquency were to rouse themselves to action, we would be left in the hardly more attractive clutches of a President Pence. Eventually it may come to that, but at least for now, as George points out, "they need Trump to pass their agenda" -- in their present situation of "unconstrained power." So pick your poison -- heads they win, tails the country loses.

#

WSJ: Israel Spied on U.S.–Iran Talks & Shared the Results with Republicans

Looking down the rabbit hole of U.S. domestic politics,
where everything you thought you knew, you don't;
click to enlarge (source)

by Gaius Publius

There are more ways to think about this news than I can count, so I'm just going to present it with more questions than comment afterward. According to a Wall Street Journal article (subscription or login required), the Israeli government spied on U.S. communications in talks between the U.S. and Iran, and then passed what they learned to the President's political opponents in Congress to help those opponents derail the negotiations.

The Journal (my emphasis everywhere):

Israel Spied on Iran Nuclear Talks With U.S.

Ally’s snooping upset White House because information was used to lobby Congress to try to sink a deal

Soon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks.

The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping, Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said.

The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.

“It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the matter.

The rest of the article notes that U.S. intelligence officials figured it out when their own spying on Israel revealed that the Israelis had information that only Israeli spying on U.S.–Iran negotiations could discover. Another part of the piece notes that, "[u]sing levers of political influence unique to Israel, Messrs. Netanyahu and [Israel's ambassador to the U.S. Ron] Dermer calculated that a lobbying campaign in Congress before an announcement was made would improve the chances of killing or reshaping any deal."

One of those "levers unique to Israel" has to have been U.S. casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who is widely seen as one of the hands behind Netanyahu's speech to Congress, if not the hand.

There's quite a bit of she-said, he-said in the article, with Israel denying everything, from the source of their information to how much was revealed to Republicans in Congress. It's an interesting read. After much good reporting about the aftermath of the Republican invitation to speak — Dermer meets with Joe Manchin, Dermer meets with Dianne Feinstein, and the like — the article closes:

“If you’re wondering whether something serious has shifted here, the answer is yes,” a senior U.S. official said. “These things leave scars.” 

Again, there's good reporting in the article; it's worth a read if this is your area of interest. As bad as the WSJ editorial page is, the reporting is often excellent. The writer of this piece is Adam Entous.

Who Is the Writer's Main Source and What Does That Question Tell Us?

The first question to ask in any piece like this is — Who are the sources and what are their goals? In this case, the primary sources are identified this way:

current and former U.S. officials said

At another point, the attribution is:

said a senior U.S. official briefed on the matter

The second category could easily include the first. At a third point we learn:

“People feel personally sold out,” a senior administration official said.

Note the word "senior." Does this mean the Journal was pitched this story by the White House via a "senior" official as a "designated" leak to punish Netanyahu further? Or did Adam Entous discover all this by himself — against U.S. government wishes — and thus put himself at risk for leaking classified information on his own say-so? I don't know for sure, obviously, but my guess is the former.

Are We Being Interfered With the Way We've Interfered With Others?

That explains the writer's perspective on this story (or at least examines it), and suggests what the White House perspective might be. The article makes clear, says explicitly, that the spying itself is not troubling to the U.S., but sharing the results with Republicans as part of partisan domestic politics is.

Now the second question: If the Israelis are guilty of spying on the U.S. government in order to aid the party out of power — and the Obama administration certainly thinks they are — are we getting payback (or blowback) for what we've done so many times in the past? I won't "go long" here, but the list is almost exhausting — to name just a few, Mosaddegh, Guatemala, Chile, on and on, even to the failed "revolt" in Venezuela. Is at least one nation (Israel) using its espionage service to control our own internal politics?

If Israel is doing to us what we did to so many others — what are the implications of that for U.S. voters and their beliefs about our political processes?

Are Republicans Using a Foreign Spy Service to Obstruct the U.S. Government?

Now look at this from a Republican perspective. Are Republicans using the espionage services of a foreign government to advance their own party-first, party-in-opposition agenda? If true, what are the limits to what they would do (or are doing)? If there are no limits, what are those implications for U.S. voters?

If the Republicans are, in effect, subcontracting their espionage to a foreign power and getting away with it — and at this point the Obama administration is only complaining, not taking more forceful action — what's next for us?

See what I mean? More ways to think about this than I can count. I'll say one thing though. If an American political party is using a foreign government's espionage service for partisan gain, we're in a different world from the one we thought we were in. Hello, Alice.

GP

Does the GOP path to victory in 2012 begin with making sure the economy doesn't recover?

Speaking (as we just were) about the disconnect, in every way imaginable, between the people who were right about the big issues that beset us during the Bush regime and the people who were wrong (not just the regimists themselves, but their media support system), at least some of us have had a chance to become familiar with some of the people who are worth listening to. Specifically, in matters of economics, one consolation of this year's economic disasters has been the opportunity to find some go-to guys in this (for most of us) arcane area.

One of the voices I've come to respect most is Ian Welsh, lately of Firedoglake. And since we've already been talking about the decision that appears to have been taken by congressional Republicans to go to war against the new administration, without knowing or caring what it plans to do, just for the sake of trying to bloody it. I wanted to make sure you saw this piece that Ian posted yesterday:

How the Republicans Intend to Win in 2012

by Ian Welsh

The only free market left

What happened last night [i.e., the Senate voting down the auto-industry bridge loans] and how it's being played in the press tells us exactly how the next 4 years are going to be played by Congressional Republicans. They will do everything they can to make sure that economic packages necessary to turn the economy around either don't get passed or get badly compromised.

They will blame the failure of such bills, and of the economy itself, on unions and on not adhering to "free market" principles. Every time they kill a bill, they will say that it's because they have rediscovered their conservative ideological roots and now understand that bailing out big companies with public money is bad, and that the free market needs to be allowed to run.

They will seize the mantle of principle and stick to it, as they are doing with the auto bailout, when they voted against an industry which has given much more money to Republicans than Democrats:

For many conservatives in Congress, the idea of government rescuing any industry is simply unpalatable -- and that trumps any contributions from Detroit.

"The tension for Republicans is that it's an industry that's been staunchly in their camp for many years, but this is legislation calling for billions of dollars of government spending," said Massie Ritsch, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics. "It's a conflict between their principles and their longtime supporters."

In 2012, having made sure that the economy has not recovered, they expect to win the Presidency and probably take back the Senate and the House. Since "free market principles" will not, in fact, fix the economy, they will then engage in the only type of big government Keynesian spending stimulus that conservatives are comfortable with—a huge surge in military spending. They'll probably also pick a war with someone, in order to justify it.

Will this plan succeed? A lot is going to depend on the skill of Obama and Senate Democrats. They will either have to finesse Republican opposition, peeling off the votes they need while keeping their own caucus from fragmenting, or they will have to strong arm it, either through public opinion, or through the Presidency's powers and various parliamentary maneuvers.