McConnell defends his record after ‘inadvertent’ comment
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Why these former Trump advisers think his legal woes won’t hurt him
Democrats need their own Mitch McConnell and other commentary
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Conservative: Dems Need Their Own McConnell
“How could Chuck Schumer have been so reckless as to set up yet another public failure for his party” when he staged the voting-rights and filibuster fiascos this week? asks National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke. The answer: He’s “terrified” he’ll be challenged by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and his decisions reflect it. Yet Schumer’s “best interests” don’t always line up with his party’s. Wednesday’s Schumer-designed “theater” in the Senate united Republicans, split Democrats, further roiled Sen. Joe Manchin, weakened Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and signaled “bipartisan opposition” to Democrats’ ideas. Still, it’s not clear the party has a better option than Schumer. “Much as they’d hate to admit it,” Democrats would “benefit immensely from having their own Mitch McConnell. But they don’t — and it shows.”
From the left: McCarthy & the 1/6 Commission
As it seeks info on private citizens, the House Jan. 6 committee “is claiming virtually absolute powers that not even the FBI or other law enforcement agencies enjoy,” warns Glenn Greenwald at his Substack. Yet several “McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases” directly barred Congress from “exactly what the 1/6 committee is now doing: conducting a separate, parallel criminal investigation in order to uncover political crimes committed by private citizens.” Indeed, it’s “investigating anyone and everyone who exercised their Constitutional rights to express views about . . . the 2020 presidential election.” Worse, it’s “sending subpoenas to private banks, demanding the banking records of private citizens, and doing so such that either the person never finds out or finds out too late to obtain a judicial order about the legality of the committee’s behavior.”
From the right: Biden Needs To Fire Key Players
“On almost every issue” Americans care about, President Biden “has made things worse” — so why, wonders David Marcus at Fox News, “hasn’t any significant member of his administration been fired?” In fact, quite a few “should be on the chopping block”: National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who presided over an Afghanistan withdrawal that got “almost everything wrong.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “the poster child of American weakness.” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who’s overseen “record numbers of illegal migrants” pouring in. And given Biden’s unfulfilled promise to shut down the coronavirus, “every member of his COVID Task Force,” especially Drs. Rochelle Walensky and Anthony Fauci, “should have been pushed out months ago.” These “clowns” are destroying the country. “For God’s sake, “let the firings begin.”
Urban beat: Chicago’s Predictable Murder Record
“Chicago hit a grim milestone in 2021: the Cook County medical examiner’s office tallied 836 homicides, the most in 25 years,” observes City Journal’s Rav Arora. “Such violence is not unexpected, given the dysfunctions in the city’s police force and the constraints and disincentives now facing Chicago cops.” Chicago PD is understaffed by more than 1,000 officers and “only 5,000 people applied to Chicago’s police academy last year, compared with about 30,000 in past years.” Cops are overworked and “laboring under a federal consent decree to reform current training, tactics, and practices,” which has led to a reduction in “proactive policing.” That deficit, in turn, has produced a “hurricane of violence ravaging black communities.” But don’t expect to hear a peep about that from Black Lives Matter.
Public-health prof: Kids Suffer Needlessly
At Tablet, Vinay Prasad examines the “delusional and dangerous cultlike” choice to mask schoolchildren and concludes, “History will not look kindly on our evidence-free decision to make kids suffer most” during the pandemic. Every American child 5 and over can “receive a COVID vaccine,” yet this progress “has been accompanied by increased pressure on kids to wear masks in school.” America “is uniquely aggressive in masking young kids,” despite “sobering” data showing it has little “effect in slowing spread.” Omicron shows “the most effective mask can’t avert infection,” only “delay it while causing inconvenience, discomfort, and difficulty speaking, all of which are detrimental to the educational and emotional well-being of schoolchildren.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
Mitch McConnell sidesteps on what Republicans would do if they recaptured Congress in the 2022 midterms: ‘I’ll let you know when we take it back’
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Mitch McConnell declined to offer details on what Republicans would do if they recaptured Congress in the midterms.
“That is a very good question,” he said.
Some senior Republicans are offering light details on tackling inflation, but they haven’t coalesced around an agenda.
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If Congressional Republicans have any sort of agenda to campaign on ahead of the 2022 midterms, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is keeping mum.
During a press conference on Wednesday, McConnell declined to offer any details about what Republicans would do in the event they recaptured both chambers of Congress in November.
“That is a very good question,” he told reporters. “And I’ll let you know when we take it back.”
Congressional Republicans largely haven’t introduced or coalesced around anything resembling a governing agenda. Axios reported in early December that McConnell simply preferred to hammer Democrats, leaving it up to the 2024 GOP nominee to outline the party’s priorities.
Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy unveiled a “Parents Bill of Rights” meant to “empower families” shortly after Democrats suffered an electoral wipeout in Virginia. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that House Republicans would focus on curbing inflation with steps like scaling back tax increases and making it easier to produce oil and gas.
Democrats have labored through the fall and winter on muscling through a party-line Build Back Better plan through Congress to expand healthcare, education and combat the climate emergency. They also approved a $550 billion infrastructure law to strengthen roads, bridges, and expand rural broadband with some Republican support over the summer.
Other efforts at bipartisan cooperation fell short last year, including on immigration, gun control, and policing reforms.
Republicans last controlled the House, Senate, and the White House under President Donald Trump in 2017. They spent much of their first year in power embarking on failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, a move that would have stripped millions of Americans from their health coverage. Trump’s signature legislative achievement ended up being the GOP tax law, which predominantly cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and large corporations.
Mitch McConnell says US should arm Ukraine after Biden’s Russia comments
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Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday the US should arm Ukraine, a day after President Joe Biden’s remarks raised questions about an international response to a Russian invasion.
Biden seemed to imply during a news conference on Wednesday that the US and its allies might not be unified in response to Russia if it attacks Ukraine in “a minor incursion.”
The comments, which the president and White House sought to clarify amid backlash, served as a signal to Russia that it was okay to “take some” of Ukraine, McConnell said on Thursday.
“I hope Vladimir Putin doesn’t misunderstand the message: No incursion into Ukraine is acceptable,” McConnell said during an appearance on Fox News’ “Special Report.”
The US should send anti-tank weapons and ground-to-air missiles to protect against helicopters before Russian forces amassed near the Ukraine border launch an offensive, McConnell said.
“They’re testing us to see whether we will do anything of consequence to keep them from gobbling up part of another sovereign country,” McConnell said. “That hasn’t happened since World War II. I don’t think Vladimir Putin understands sovereignty.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted Biden after his remarks seemed to make little of a Ukrainian invasion. AP J. Scott Applewhite
A Ukrainian soldier stands at the line of separation from pro-Russian rebels in the Donetsk region, Ukraine. AP / Andriy Dubchak
“I think job No. 1 is to make sure that Ukrainians have the tools to inflict severe damage on any Russian troops coming in,” he added. “And, second, to threaten to use — and use if you have to — the kind of economic sanctions the Russians have never been subjected to before.”
Biden had said during his news conference that Russia would be held accountable if it invades Ukraine but he seemed to indicate the severity of the response from the US and its allies would depend on what Russian forces do.
“It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion, and then we end up having a fight about what to do and what not do, etc.,” Biden said. “But if they actually do what they’re capable of doing with the force they’ve massed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia.”
After Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and other leaders reacted to the remarks, Biden clarified that “any incursion” would be met with a coordinated economic response.
A convoy of Russian armored vehicles moves along a highway in Crimea. AP
McConnell’s comments about Ukraine came as part of an overall response to Biden’s news conference, his first solo meeting with reporters for the year that last nearly two hours.
Fox host Bret Baier asked McConnell about Biden portraying GOP legislators as lined up in obstruction to hobble the Democratic president’s agenda. McConnell noted he had helped pass legislation including the bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan, a vote which drew backlash from some conservatives and former President Donald Trump.
McConnell claimed the president was being pulled leftward politically and prioritizing bills like the massive Build Back Better social spending plan and sweeping voting-rights legislation that didn’t have the votes to pass both chambers of the Democratic-controlled Congress and weren’t popular among many Americans.
“If the president starts acting like a moderate like he campaigned, we can do business,” McConnell said. “The reason we’ve not been speaking recently this year is because he adopted the Bernie Sanders prescription for America.”
When asked, McConnell didn’t directly address questions about his relationship with Trump and the pro-Trump wing of the party, but said he expected the 2022 midterms to be a referendum on Democratic leadership in the federal government.
McConnell’s take on all things un-presidential seems a mite un-senatorial
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I don’t think I’ve ever heard Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell utter the term “profoundly un-presidential” before. I’m stunned that, having lived through the four years of the Trump presidency, he chooses to find a speech on voting rights by President Biden as the moment to use it.
Donald Trump attempting to coerce the president of a foreign country into assisting his reelection here at home comes to mind. Surely that was un-presidential.
What about that phone call with the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump pressured him about those 11,780 votes he needed. That smelled un-presidential.