Kentucky-Bribed Statesman: Mitch McConnell Unmasked
Anthony Weiner recently lamented that “if the internet didn’t exist,” he’d be the mayor of New York. In other words, if John Q. Public weren’t so privy to the facts, and so readily able to investigate those facts and exchange opinions about them online, politicians could more easily manipulate their political images and determine the outcome of elections.
Likewise, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell is now feeling the stinging disapproval of an informed public that he may not have felt twenty years ago. Like the grand reveal at the end a Scooby-Doo episode, McConnell the “fiscally conservative” Senate leader has been unmasked in the last month’s proceedings and identified as what he really is — a career politician who’d sell his constituents and American taxpayers down the river for a buck (or in this case, a couple billion bucks). And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for meddling Matt Drudge and the like.
In late September, Mitch McConnell used his lofty position in the Republican minority to stand against Senate conservatives like Ted Cruz and fellow Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. He made and underhanded effort to block a House bill which would fund the government and raise the debt ceiling in exchange for defunding ObamaCare. Knowing that the Senate would not have the 60 votes necessary to amend the House bill to fund ObamaCare, he and fellow collaborators voted in favor of a cloture vote which would allow Harry Reid and Senate Democrats to amend the bill with an easily attainable straight majority vote. Then, having cleared the Senate Democrats’ path to funding ObamaCare, he cast a show vote against the amended spending bill, which included the funding of ObamaCare, hoping it would absolve him of any blame.
We noticed it. In fact, it was insulting and infuriating that McConnell took such care to conceal the betrayal of his stated conviction to oppose ObamaCare. Now, his efforts to fund ObamaCare have culminated in what’s being described as the “Kentucky Kickback” by the Senate Conservatives Fund. “In exchange for funding ObamaCare and raising the debt limit,” the group says, “Mitch McConnell has secured a $2 billion earmark” to a pet project in his home state of Kentucky.
Of course, in a further insult to our intelligence, McConnell is again trying to shirk any responsibility for billions in new taxpayer liability which will uniquely benefit his state. The language, his office reminds reporters, was introduced by Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), and the provision will raise the spending limit of Kentucky’s Olmsted Lock and Dam project from $775 million to $2.9 billion.
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