By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
McConnell is survivalist and a chameleon. Actually , he is a political gecko, changing colors not just to blend in but also to catch prey. – David Hawpe, Kentucky Journalism Hall of Famer and former Louisville Courier-Journal editor.
Sen. Mitch McConnell’s head-snapping 180 on Jan. 6 and Donald Trump didn't surprise Bill Straub.
“The thing you have to remember about McConnell is that he always places party ahead of country, and this was just the perfect example of that,” said Straub, a veteran journalist and member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame.
After Trump-incited rioters, including neo-Nazis and Confederate flag-toting white supremacists, attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, then Majority Leader McConnell seemed to finally turn against the guy whose agenda he had loyally pushed for four years.
“There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” McConnell said (after voting to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial). “The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president, and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”
Now, McConnell (who also voted to keep Trump in office during the president's first impeachment trial), is turning thumbs down on a House-approved independent commission to investigate what amounted to an attempted coup by Trump supporters to keep Joe Biden out of the White House.
“After careful consideration, I’ve made the decision to oppose the House Democrats’ slanted and unbalanced proposal for another commission to study the events of January 6,” McConnell said.
McConnell was “speaking in the emotions of the moment” when he rebuked Trump, said Straub, Washington columnist for the Northern Kentucky Tribune. “As soon as he was finished, he was probably sorry he said it and he has crawled back to Trump knowing that he needs Trump in order to retake the Senate in 2022.”
By so starkly reversing himself on Trump's role in egging on the insurrection, McConnell has used up “every remaining scintilla of integrity that he had, which was already below the bottom of the barrel. Now, he’s just doing the old ‘Republicanism-comes-before-country’ which he is, quite frankly, famous for,” said Straub, who was the Kentucky Post’s Frankfort bureau chief before migrating to Washington where he was the White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service.
Straub agreed that McConnell, who is starting his seventh term, is anything but a beloved and revered statesman in the Henry Clay, Alben Barkley or John Sherman Cooper mold. (Young Mitch McConnell interned under the moderate Cooper and considers him his mentor and hero.)
Straub said McConnell, who has likened himself to Darth Vader, reminds him of the old story about two men fleeing an angry bear. “There’s no way we can outrun the bear,” one says to the other, who replies, “All I have to do is outrun you.”
Said Straub: “People in Kentucky are so disdainful of the Democrats, all that he has to do is outrun the Democratic candidate.”