Mitch McConnell addresses Black voter comment backlash, says he was ‘mischaracterized’
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Mitch McConnell addresses Black voter comment backlash, says he was ‘mischaracterized’
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke Friday, saying his recent comment on voting rights was ‘outrageously mischaracterized.’
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
Sen. Mitch McConnell’s controversial remarks met with widespread backlash
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responds to backlash over comment about Black voters
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed back Friday against the uproar over a comment he made about African American voters, calling the criticism directed his way “outrageous.”
McConnell had been accused of racism for saying that “African American” voters cast ballots at similar rates to “Americans.” The comment implied that Black voters are somehow not American and underscored the concerns of voting rights advocates that Republicans in state legislatures across the country are explicitly seeking to disenfranchise Black voters.
Following a speech Friday at an annual conference in Louisville, the Republican leader said he misspoke Wednesday when he made the comment during a Washington news conference.
“I’ve never been accused of this sort of thing before, and it’s hurtful and offensive,” he said. “And I think some of the critics know it’s totally nonsense.”
McConnell on Wednesday had said that “African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.” McConnell explained on Friday that he should have said the word “all” before “Americans.”
He also defended his record on race by noting that he attended the Rev. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington in 1963. He also said he helped organize a civil rights march at Kentucky’s state Capitol and was present when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
When asked what he would say to those who had been offended by his words, McConnell said he would discuss his record relating to voting rights, and brought up his role as a mentor to Kentucky’s Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is Black and one of many Republicans who came to the minority leader’s defense this week.
“I think he would confirm with you that I recruited him to run. I’ve supported him, and I’m proud of him,” McConnell said. “I have had African American speechwriters, schedulers, office managers over the years.”
Charles Booker, a Kentucky Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, had been among many who had blasted the Republican earlier in the week. Booker, who is Black, did not back down from criticizing McConnell on Friday.
“Mitch McConnell wants you to know it’s fine for him to block Voting Rights because he has Black friends,” tweeted Booker, who unsuccessfully ran for McConnell’s seat in 2020 and is challenging GOP Sen. Rand Paul this year.
McConnell tried to rebuff concerns among Democrats that GOP state lawmakers across the country are trying to disenfranchise minority voters by pointing to record-high turnout for all voters in the 2020 election.
Federal legislation like the kind he and other GOP lawmakers blocked on Wednesday also wasn’t necessary, he said, because the Voting Rights Act was still law and concerns over specific state voting laws could be worked out through the court system.
“They co-opted Congressman Lewis’ name, stuck it on a bill that really was not related to the Voting Rights Act … in order to try to achieve a partisan advantage by federalizing election laws,” McConnell said, referencing the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.
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The part of the bill named after Lewis, the late civil rights leader and Democratic congressman from Georgia, would have updated the Voting Rights Act and was a direct response to a Supreme Court ruling that weakened the law’s oversight of states with a history of discriminating against Black and other minority voters.
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.