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Is Mitch McConnell the arsonist who set the fire and ran away?

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Is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell the arsonist who set a fire and ran away?

Philadelphia Inquirer Columnist Will Bunch likens McConnell to a gambler who knows when to fold his hand and to an arsonist who sets a fire then runs away. These are apt comparisons. When McConnell announced he’d retire as Minority Leader in November you got the feeling that he was almost in shock at the political scene and toxic partisan climate that he worked so hard create. McConnell seems akin to Dr. Frankenstein seeing the damage his monster created-0a monster now no longer in his control.

Here are some highlights of Bunch’s analysis:

You gotta hand it to Mitch McConnell, the GOP’s 82-year-old Senate minority leader who arguably has done more to bend, staple and mutilate America in the 21st century than anyone else. He did so with zero charm or charisma, in the slow, ageless and ultimately inscrutable manner of the giant Galapagos turtle he so weirdly resembles.

But last Wednesday, the ancient gambler of the Senate looked carefully at his final hand. He knew when to run.
In announcing that he’ll step down as the chamber’s Republican leader after November’s presidential election, McConnell did his best impersonation of a statesman, proclaiming: “One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter.” But the real McConnell burned through as he tried to have it every which way — seemingly attacking today’s MAGA-mesmerized GOP without saying exactly what the problem is or using his power to do anything about it, while pretending he had nothing to do with it.

Today’s GOP is now almost totally MAGA. McConnell is frustrated and seemingly in shock that the current incarnation of the GOP seems poised to refuse to fund aid to Ukraine even if it means a Russian victory.

Here’s what McConnell understood but wouldn’t say out loud: America’s political arsonist, having managed in his record-setting 17-year run as Senate GOP leader to light multiple matches under all three branches of U.S. government, could see the wildfire he started finally lapping at the Capitol. This November, he will make us all truly believe that turtles can run.

The echoes from McConnell’s farewell had barely died in the Senate chamber when the Supreme Court that the senator has shaped and molded like a lump of Kentucky clay did exactly what many of us feared and put its clumsy thumb of injustice firmly on the life-or-death scales of November’s presidential election. The high court’s handling of Donald Trump’s ridiculous claims of presidential immunity from all crimes has been guided by three principles — delay, delay, and delay — that are pushing Trump’s 2020 election interference trial past Election Day. It’s a realpolitik move in the image of the court’s creator, McConnell, but Mitch doesn’t want to be around for the consequences.

…And don’t forget that McConnell’s reshaping of the judiciary didn’t begin and end with the Supreme Court. The GOP Senate leader slowed Barack Obama’s nominees at the end of his presidency and then flipped the switch when Trump arrived in January 2017, ultimately pushing through 230 new federal judges, including one-third of the appellate seats. Some had minimal qualifications except for their ties to the right-wing Federalist Society. Exhibit A might be U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon of Florida, whom Trump plucked from legal obscurity in 2020 and seems hell-bent on returning the favor by slow walking the ex-president’s classified documents trial. Mitch did that!

Some Democrats seem willing to give McConnell a pass because they find themselves allies on the urgent issue of funding Ukraine’s war effort to block Putin’s aggression….Like everything with McConnell, it’s hard to say exactly why he’s surrendering his leadership post now…Why’d he do it? It’s not even clear McConnell knew what he was doing, on a lifelong political power trip that spiraled out of control. His epitaph was written by the friend who — as the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer struggled to understand what made McConnell tick in writing a 2020 profile — told her: “Give up. You can look and look for something more in him, but it isn’t there. I wish I could tell you there is some secret thing he believes in, but he doesn’t.”

We are currently consumed, as we should be, with Trump’s autocratic march on Washington. But it was McConnell’s rank amorality, in a wetlands where everything and everybody — even justices of the Supreme Court — is up for sale, that caused the utter devastation that burned the pathway for a narcissistic dictator. When McConnell tells you that he doesn’t misunderstand politics, he is telling you he’s smart enough to know he doesn’t want to be seen wandering lost among the smoldering wreckage he created. Somewhere in the darkness, this gambler did not break even. It’s time to run.

Meanwhile, the fire is burning fiercely and out of control.

GO HERE to read his entire column.

Photo 87996203 | Arsonist © Chris Dorney | Dreamstime.com

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