An extraordinary political fund-raiser, Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has used his skill to put himself on the brink of a remarkable career achievement. If Republicans hold the Senate in the Nov. 7 elections, he is expected to succeed retiring Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee as majority leader.
What makes McConnell a secret weapon? There is a great piece about him today in the Lexington Herald Leader http://www.kentucky.com/...
And someone who can raise more than $90 million for his allies - as McConnell did twice, as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee - is golden when it comes time for GOP senators to elect a majority leader. That's not counting the millions McConnell sends to GOP colleagues from his own political-action committee and campaign fund.
Well we know that the adherance to party loyalty and dedication to money that McConnell so readily displays is what got this country where it is right now. He is unabashed at his corporate connections and I would venture a guess that even if democrats take the house, if republicans keep the senate, with McConnell as Majority Leader, the next two years will accomplish at best a complete deadlock. Here is a great example of the type of tricks he is great at.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) had filed a sweeping amendment to a defense bill requiring all U.S. troops to be pulled out of Iraq by July 2007. Knowing his measure would attract little support as written, and hoping to maintain a unified Democratic message, Kerry had informed Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), who was managing the defense bill, that he was not yet ready to offer it for a vote. Warner agreed to give Kerry more time, then left the Capitol building to attend a memorial service at the Pentagon for victims of 9/11.
Soon afterwards, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate number two, rose to speak, his light blue tie elegantly setting off the pinstripes. A pale, graying, and somewhat slight man of 64, McConnell looks more like a financial planner than a politician. He has an unblinking, vaguely android-like stare and gives the impression, even when speaking, of wanting to avoid being noticed. But today, he could not keep a hint of a smile from flickering across his normally impassive features. "Colleagues on the other side have said they were going to offer an amendment to advocate withdrawal by the end of the year," he reminded the chamber. "Let's have that debate." With that, McConnell took Kerry's measure, scratched out the Democrat's name, replaced it with his own, and offered it for a vote.
The move seemed to take even McConnell's Republican colleagues by surprise. Frist, who had just arrived on the floor--white spats complementing the seersucker--referred to the "Kerry amendment," and appeared momentarily confused when told that the pending measure was now, in fact, the McConnell amendment. Even C-SPAN was fooled, informing viewers in an on-screen graphic that the Senate was considering the Kerry amendment. Whatever its name, the measure was rejected by a vote of 93-6. Democrats denounced what Kerry called a "fictitious vote," and even Warner tried to distance himself from McConnell's maneuver, informing his colleagues that it had been carried out in his absence.
McConnell, though, was unashamed. He stood, grinning, on the Senate floor for a long time, his hands clasped placidly in front of him as if at church, as colleagues came up to chat--one gave him a congratulatory pat on the back as he passed. Then he took a victory lap around the press gallery, telling reporters "it has been interesting to watch the Democrats have this debate within their caucus," while Kerry and Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) struggled to respond. As McConnell anticipated, the storyline that emerged in news reports over the next few days was that the Senate had overwhelmingly rejected a quick Iraq pullout and that the Iraq issue was uniting Republicans and dividing Democrats.
The maneuver was typical of McConnell, the Senate Majority Whip, who over a 22-year Senate career has earned a reputation as a shrewd parliamentary tactician and a ruthless partisan warrior.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/...
Ruthless partisan warrior indeed.
McConnells wife is Elaine Chao, appointed by Bush to be his Secretary of Labor. She is a board member of the Heritage foundation, http://www.heritage.org/ Which is home to neocons extroardinaire, and she has huge corporate connections. http://www.opensecrets.org/...
It seems clear to me that republicans have chosen the most partisan, the best connected, the biggest fundraiser and possibly the most immovable of all senators to succeed Frist. It's gonna be a hell of a fight.