Mitch The Unforgiving

I was instructed by a close friend that I needed to write about Mitch. We all know that Mitch McConnell is one of the chief evil-doers in the Congress, and certainly in the Republican Party. But what can one say about Mitch?

Well, recently, his wife became at least as well-known as Mitch for evil doing.  Turns out his wife, Elaine Chow, currently Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, has been carrying on at least as scandalously as her hubby.

From Politico:

Seems Elaine Chao:

“designated a special liaison to help with grant applications and other priorities from her husband Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky, paving the way for grants to his state totaling at least $78 million for favored projects as McConnell prepared to campaign for reelection.

Chao’s aide Todd Inman, who stated in an email to McConnell’s Senate office that Chao had personally asked him to serve as an intermediary, helped advise the senator and local Kentucky officials on grants with special significance for McConnell — including a highway-improvement project in a McConnell political stronghold that had been twice rejected for previous grant applications.

 “Todd probably smoothed the way, I mean, you know, used his influence,” Mattingly said in a POLITICO interview. “Everybody says that projects stand on their own merit, right? So if I’ve got 10 projects, and they’re all equal, where do you go to break the tie?”

The circumstances surrounding the Owensboro grant and another, more lucrative grant to Boone County, highlight the ethical conflicts in having a powerful Cabinet secretary married to the Senate’s leader and in a position to help him politically. McConnell has long touted his ability to bring federal resources to his state, which his wife is now in a position to assist.

Chao’s designation of Inman as a special intermediary for Kentucky — a privilege other states did not enjoy — gave a special advantage to projects favored by her husband, which could in turn benefit his political interests. In such situations, ethicists say, each member of a couple benefits personally from the success of the other.

“Where a Cabinet secretary is doing things that are going to help her husband get reelected, that starts to rise to the level of feeling more like corruption to the average American. … I do think there are people who will see that as sort of ‘swamp behavior,’” said John Hudak, a Brookings Institution scholar who has studied political influence in federal grant-making.”

So, the behavior runs in the family.

Now, in terms of “smoothing the way”, we could look at Mitch’s behavior regarding Supreme Court nominees by a president. With Obama, Mitch simply refused to hold any hearings on Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland, despite having a year left before Obama concluded his term.

Garland was nominated to fill the 2016 vacancy on the Supreme Court created by the death that February of Justice Antonin Scalia, an icon of conservative jurisprudence. President Barack Obama quickly named Merrick Garland, then 63, to fill the seat. Garland had long been considered a prime prospect for the high court, serving as chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — a frequent source of justices that is sometimes called the "little Supreme Court."

Widely regarded as a moderate, Garland had been praised in the past by many Republicans, including influential senators such as Orrin Hatch of Utah. But even before Obama had named Garland, and in fact only hours after Scalia's death was announced, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared any appointment by the sitting president to be null and void. He said the next Supreme Court justice should be chosen by the next president — to be elected later that year.

So much for smoothing the way. And Mitch is now campaigning to shove through another Supreme under Trump, as soon as someone has the decency to die.

So, Mitch simply has no ethical dimension at all. He will simply refuse to hold hearings on anything the Democrats want to do, which is, of course, what Nancy Pelosi faces should she ever decide to impeach Trump.  Under McConnell, there would either be no Senate trial, or the trial would be a farce, giving Trump yet another opportunity to yell Fake News about his impeachment.

This situation produces dire consequences for our form of government, because it converts our system into nearly a monarchy.  And what is a monarchy anyway? A monarchy is a system of government in which an individual, the Monarch, or King/Queen, rules the land. In a constitutional monarchy, such as Britain, the monarch is constrained by the Constitution. In an absolute monarchy, the monarch is unconstrained.

Now, if we listen to the words uttered by our president, he declares that he might perhaps remain in office, even after his elected reign ends. That is, he may simply stay as president. Now, under our system, he cannot do that, but Trump doesn’t care about such things. He wants to do what he wants to do. He feels no constraints by the Law/Constitution. With a Mitch McConnell running the Senate, almost as an absolute leader (there is no such thing, but Mitch seems not to care about such niceties), and having him concede to anything the ruler (Trump) wants to do, we begin the process of destroying our Constitutional system of government.

Mitch, oddly, acts now as though he were the absolute monarch, except his reign is over the Senate, not the country.  Since we need the Senate to weigh in and vote on anything that is recommended by the House as a new Law, Mitch’s refusal effectively disables the House.

So, Mitch McConnell may in fact be beginning to cause more damage to our system of government than Donald Trump, who himself has been, and is the single most destructive individual ever to lead our government.

Our Nation desperately needs to throw out these tyrannical individuals who seem bent on destroying the country.  I know, they don’t see themselves that way. But they are, and I believe that any constitutional authority would agree.

So, once again, voting in 2020 goes beyond the normal “important”. Voting may now be the single most important thing our citizenry can do in our lifetimes.  And voting out Mitch McConnell is at least as important as voting out President Trump.  We need thoughtful people in government, people with both morality and an ethical dimension to their name. We don’t need “liberals, or “conservatives”. We need thinking humans with a conscience, and a grasp of history, people who understand that the United States must continue to exist as a constitutional republic, with a responsible government.