Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is keeping his mouth shut—presumably waiting for marching orders from Dear Leader—on whether he supports renaming the Russell Senate Office Building, as Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has proposed. McConnell would say only that “We’ll be talking about the best way to honor Sen. McCain,” and refused to answer follow-up questions from reporters.
Now, John McCain is an overrated figure who is not such a historic giant that he deserves a Senate office building named after him. But Richard Russell also does not deserve a Senate office building named after him, because he was a raging racist, even by the standards of his time:
Russell was a staunch segregationist, and he used his same mastery of the Senate rules to block civil rights legislation, even keeping an anti-lynching statute from becoming law.
He fought integration in the nation's military and at federal government agencies. In 1956, Russell was a co-author of the "Southern Manifesto," which opposed desegregation of public places, and he led the Southern bloc of senators who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, calling it "shortsighted and disastrous."
Here’s McConnell with a chance to rename a building after a senator and presidential nominee from his own party, with Democratic support, and he’s not jumping at it? Tell me that’s not about Donald Trump’s temper tantrums. Go ahead, try to say that one with a straight face.
There are much better reasons for retaking the Senate than naming a building after John McCain, but retake it we must. Can you give $3 each to Nevada's Jacky Rosen and the Arizona Democratic nominee fund?
Tuesday, Aug 28, 2018 · 3:03:48 PM +00:00
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Laura Clawson
Monday it was Trump being pressured into lowering the flag for McCain, today it’s McConnell bowing (at least partway) to pressure: McConnell now says he’ll form a bipartisan “gang” to look at ways to honor McCain. Appropriate, because McCain did love a bipartisan gang.