McConnell’s Feckless ‘Leadership’ May Cost the GOP the Senate

This week, Senate Republicans are preparing to wrap up their work and head back on the campaign trail — a full two weeks before they were scheduled to leave. Since returning from a seven-week August recess, the Senate has put in a grand total of three weeks of work. Now, Republicans plan to bust out of Washington to protect their Senate majority.

In their wake, they leave a year of pandering to K Street, funding Planned Parenthood, and largely failing to fight on any conservative priority. But this is primarily the fault of one man: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (F, 42%).

As conservatives, we are repeatedly bashed over the head with the idea that we must sit down and shut up to “protect the Senate majority.” But what has this majority — led by Senator McConnell — won for conservatives?

The answer is a big, fat nothing.

McConnell’s legacy of leadership for conservatives is marked by combativeness, deception, and brute force — all in the name of “party unity.”

Just consider the major accomplishments of this Republican Senate. McConnell crows about passing the Keystone pipeline, a major transportation bill stuffed with earmarks, and a tax bill with blatant handouts to special interests. How about that $500 billion Medicare bailout? None of these are victories for conservatives. Not even close.

What happened to their priorities?

Well, let’s see. McConnell refused to fight President Obama’s executive amnesty. McConnell caved on conservative calls to end the Export-Import Bank. He negotiated away the biggest conservative spending accomplishment in decades, set up Republican amendment votes so that they would fail, considered ending the Senate filibuster, and, even worse, excoriated his own members for trying to have meaningful votes to repeal Obamacare.

Just last week, McConnell flat out ignored pleas from conservatives in the House and Senate to introduce a spending bill that will keep the government running into early 2017 — thereby avoiding passing significant and controversial legislation during the most unaccountable period of government.

As if to stick it to conservatives on the way out the door, McConnell dropped the fight to prevent federal Zika funds from going to Planned Parenthood clinics — a position that even Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. (F, 53%) has declared he cannot support.

Aside from barely standing for anything remotely Republican, it is clear that Mitch McConnell doesn’t care about conservatives.

Over the last year, conservatives have been told their ideas are too divisive and too controversial to be given any air time — much less an opportunity for a vote. All this, despite the fact that in the Senate every Senator has equal authority, and thus equal opportunity, to have their concerns heard. Instead of focusing on representing all factions of his party, McConnell has made it his special mission to shut down conservatives, relegating them to the back bench of “unfavorables” where they (not to mention their constituents) linger in obscurity.

When pressed, McConnell’s office stammers defensively, “but… but… we have a Democratic president, we could never pass their ideas! We have a Democratic minority that will block us!”

Somehow, the threat of disagreement from Democrats has become an acceptable excuse for not fighting at all.

So as the Senate hightails it out of town to “protect the majority” — pushing all their major work into the lame duck — it seems worth asking: what’s the point of having a majority if it refuses to fight for its principles?

It seems that conservatives aren’t the only ones asking this question. In a recent national poll conducted by Morning Consult, McConnell ranked dead last, with over half of the respondents responding negatively. That poll seems coincide with his Conservative Review score, a pathetic 42%.

It seems that it’s not just conservatives who are upset with McConnell’s failure to lead the Senate toward anything resembling a transparent process that draws a principled line in the sand against his Democratic counterpart. Voters are tired of not being able to distinguish between the parties. They’re tired of having politicians promise to repeal Obamacare root and branch, and then try to back out of it because it’s too hard.

McConnell’s fecklessness may indeed cost the Republicans its Senate majority. Sadly, the question must be percolating on the minds of most conservatives: What the point of having a Senate majority if it’s subject to the whims of only one man? A man who is nothing more than an aristocrat who silences conservatives within his own party; or too inept in his own obligations to fight on principle?

While the outcome of this election is uncertain, one thing is clear. Conservatives deserve far better than Mitch McConnell. (For more from the author of “McConnell’s Feckless ‘Leadership’ May Cost the GOP the Senate” HERE)

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