One year ago today, we first profiled
our original profile of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a sixth-term senator who has risen from unlikely beginnings as an ordinary turtle to being covered in radioactive ooze and forgoing a "teenage mutant ninja" stage to instead become a fixture in Washington, D.C. He has spent the past seven years leading the Republican Party in the Senate to not just require Democrats to have a filibuster-proof 60 vote majority to pass anything (even taking the unprecedented step of once filibustering a bill HE HIMSELF WROTE), but also to steadfastly block all judicial nominees and Cabinet appointees of the Obama administration to delay them actually getting anything done. He has an extremely conservative voting record, which he does his best to misrepresent (y'know lie) about every six years to try and ensure his re-election while he airs some of the
weirdest ads on his own behalf. McConnell boldly stated his primary goal as Senate Minority Leader was to "
make Barack Obama a one term president", so based on his own expectations, he's a complete failure.
In spite of being consistently polled as one of the least popular senators in the country, Mitch McConnell did indeed win re-election in the 2014 elections, getting 56% of the vote against Allison Lundergan Grimes, and as Republicans took the Senate, he became Senate Majority Leader.
-On Sept. 11th, 2014: Mitch McConnell leads a GOP filibuster of a proposal for a Constitutional Amendment to amend campaign finance reform for elections, an issue that 84% of Americans, including 80% of Republicans, agree should be moved towards.
-On March 9th, 2015: Sen. McConnell joins 46 other Republican senators who sign a letter sent to the leaders or Iran, trying to undermine foreign policy during nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, and earning them the sobriquet of "47 traitors", as the move may have been a violation of the Logan Act.
-April 3rd, 2015: McConnell and several other prominent Republican senators file a brief with the Supreme Court to "reject gay marriages".
-July 20th, 2015: Mitch McConnell accuses former Secretary of State, and Senate colleague Hillary Clinton of "playing the gender card" during her presidential campaign.
-August 3rd, 2015: McConnell votes for the GOP Senate’s to attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, based off of manufactured outrage over the heavily edited “sting” videos of Planned Parenthood employees engineered by a Right to Life Group regarding fetal tissue transport fees that have been debunked by investigators. This vote, however, is a particularly ironic stance for Sen. McConnell, given he's been in the Senate long enough to have voted in 1993 to legalize the donation of fetal tissue in such a matter.
-September 22nd, 2015: Mitch McConnell votes for for HR 36, a ban on abortion at 20 weeks. It is filibustered by Democrats (the president would have likely vetoed it if it hit his desk, and even if that happened, it would be expected to be deemed unconstitutional via the Roe v. Wade ruling).
-October 27th, 2015: Sen. McConnell reacts to Environmental Protection Agency regulations on climate rules, declaring "There is a War on Coal in America" and "the leader is the president of the United States".
Now, less than a year into McConnell's time as Senate Majority Leader, Republican leadership got a shock when Speaker of the House John Boehner resigned. And the reaction from a lot of the hard right edge of the GOP was... Mitch McConnell should follow suit and get the hell out, too.
Most of that criticism is coming from McConnell being unable to push their agenda in the Senate without having Sen. Harry Reid filibuster him (turnabout is fair play, after years of McConnell doing the same to him), and the rest is that he has the good sense to not shut down the government again, or refuse to raise the debt ceiling (which would be catastrophic). McConnell has elevated himself to one of the highest offices in the land... and now it's a job that everyone will hate him for holding, as long as he has it. Which if early forecasts hold, might only be until January 2017, when he'll be drummed back down to Senate Minority Leader when Democrats re-take the Senate.
As far as being a Senator... he's not due up for re-election again until 2020, when he'll be 78, and perhaps gunning for his seventh term.
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