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Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) not only looks perplexed, he is perplexed — perpetually perplexed.
He admits so himself.
Most recently, at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council annual meeting, McConnell admitted that he was “perplexed” because the President of the United States, elected by the people to serve a full, productive, four-year term, didn’t curl up in the fetal position after the midterm election — McConnell calls it a “butt-kicking” — and is not just fading away, but rather is fighting back and outmaneuvering him and the GOP by moving to the left.
McConnell: “So I’ve been perplexed by the reaction since the election, the sort of in your face dramatic move to the left. I don’t know what we can expect in terms of reaching bipartisan agreement.”
This call for bipartisanship comes from the same man who, nearly two years after Obama was elected president, said, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
From “the same Mitch McConnell who promised before the election that he would break Obama and force him to do the Republican Party’s bidding. McConnell intended to accomplish this goal by using government shutdowns to force the president’s hand. “
McConnell has been perplexed, disturbed, before.
According to The Huffington Post, incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was “very disturbed” when — after the midterm elections that were supposed to have neutered the President — Obama announced that he intended to exercise his executive powers on various matters.
Lamenting the fact that the president was still the President, a very disturbed McConnell proclaimed, “We’d like for the president to recognize the reality that he has the government that he has, not the one that he wishes he had, and work with us…”
Shades of another arrogant GOP personality who, in the middle of a war, told the troops, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
As the Wall Street Journal reports, when the President signed an executive order protecting undocumented immigrants from deportation, announced plans to, along with China, cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and called for new regulations on broadband providers, it was once again “all to the dismay of Mr. McConnell and other Republicans.”
Memo to Mr. McConnell, and to the GOP, be prepared to stay perplexed, dismayed and disturbed for the next two years because, as Politicus USA puts it:
McConnell and Boehner thought that they were getting the imaginary Obama that Fox News is always talking about, but they are both realizing that the man they are going to be dealing with for the next two years is nothing like what Republicans imagined him to be.
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President Obama isn’t indecisive. The president is not weak. Obama has shown in numerous standoffs with House Republicans that he doesn’t respond well to bullying and hostage politics. The president’s offers of bipartisanship are real, but he expects Republicans to meet him in the middle…
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[…]
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President Obama responded to the midterm election results ready to fight. Instead of a victory lap, McConnell has gotten himself a political street fight where President Obama has already won the first round.
One gets the sense that feeling perplexed is just the beginning of Mitch McConnell’s problems.
Lead photo: Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.