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Throughout his 17-year tenure leading the Senate Republican caucus, Mitch McConnell cultivated the image of a dour, serious, power-player who magically, it seemed, out-maneuvered his foes at every step in the political process.
So, at age 82 and his days atop the chamber’s GOP conclave dwindling to a precious few, it’s curious to see the Louisville lawmaker drift from master of his domain to, well, if not a full laughingstock, certainly the subject of suppressed giggles over his continuing and odd defense of his party’s presidential candidate, one Donald J. Trump.
McConnell’s road to perdition started back in March when he publicly endorsed the former president, who lost his re-election bid in 2020. This support came after Trump tossed a racial slur toward McConnell’s wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, and and after McConnell’s declaration holding Trump responsible for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the nation’s Capitol, staged in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential results.
At the time, McConnell indicated he felt an obligation to do so as a Republican Party leader, ignoring the dozens if not hundreds of similarly affiliated pols, elected and not, who couldn’t stomach the thought of another four years of this malignant boob in the White House.
Regardless, McConnell cast fate to the wind and embraced the man who called him every name in the book, including “dumb son-of-a-bitch” and a “stone-cold loser.”
Then it was revealed in a book published this month, The Price of Power, authored by Michael Tackett, deputy Washington bureau chief of the Associated Press, that McConnell referred to Trump privately as “a despicable human being,” asserting that the man he endorsed is “stupid as well as being ill-tempered, and can’t even figure out where his own best interests lie.”
Trump’s loss in 2020, McConnell said, “only underscores the good judgment of the American people. They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him.”
Yet McConnell wants this same man rehired this year, a position many folks found ... well, let’s politely say incongruous. Supporting an individual who is both “stupid” and “a despicable human being” isn’t normal, even in politics. But that’s the path ol’ Mitch forged.
Now he’s taking it a step further. Trump’s Democratic foe in the Nov. 5 election, Vice President Kamala Harris, acknowledged under questioning on Oct. 23 that she considers Trump a fascist, agreeing with Trump’s erstwhile chief of staff, former Marine Corp Gen. John Kelly, who said the Lord of Mar-a-Lago meets “the general definition of a fascist.”
The whole fascist thing didn’t sit well with our boy Mitch, who signed a joint statement with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) urging Harris to ix-nay on the ascist-fay, expressing concern that such harsh talk could result in an assassination attempt on Trump, who was shot at in one attempt in July and stalked by another gun-wielding dope in September.
“In the weeks since that second sobering reminder, the Democratic nominee for President of the United States has only fanned the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus,” the GOP pair said. “Her most recent and most reckless invocations of the darkest evil of the 20th century seem to dare it to boil over.”
“Boiling cauldron of political animus?” Jeez, who writes this stuff, R.L Stine?
Anyway, Mitch wants Kamala to quit being nasty to his new BFF, Donald J. Trump, although, perhaps, the easiest and best way to halt talk of Trump being a fascist is for him to stop talking and acting like a fascist. But more on that in a bit.
It would be no big deal except, as has been noted, most prominently by CNN anchor Jake Tapper, Trump has characterized Harris as a fascist on at least three occasions – many more, truth be told — before her reference to him. In September, in fact, Trump called her a “Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist,” a mouthful in anyone’s league, eliciting not so much as a squawk from the Senate Republican leader.
Apparently, the cauldron only boils for one side.
This has always been Mitch’s weird modus operandi. His side gets a clean shave, the other side gets a cut throat. It’s okay to block a Supreme Court nominee when a position opens during the final year of a president’s term. But when the president is a member of one’s own Republican Party, it’s fine to name a replacement just a few weeks before an election.
This is considered masterful politics in some circles. Elsewhere it’s evidence of the sort of underhanded means that have created havoc in the nation’s political and governmental systems. Now McConnell is complaining about his presidential candidate being called a fascist while the candidate operates as, well, a fascist.
And Trump has, indeed been exposed as a fascist. The person doing the exposing in this instance is Trump himself. It could be that the biggest difference between Trump and Mussolini is Benito didn’t wear a red tie.
Granted, reasonable folks can differ on what constitutes fascism. Back in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, during the height of the Vietnam War, fascist was often used as the Swiss army knife of derision, useful in just about any case, usually followed by the word “pigs,” if that gives you any idea about the term’s intent.
A perusal of your handy-dandy dictionary or encyclopedia, in this case Wikipedia, will establish, generally speaking, that fascism is “a far-right, authoritarian and ultranationalist political ideology and movement.” It is characterized in this definition by a dictatorial leader and a centralized autocracy. There might be other factors, but this offers a pretty clear picture.
Trump himself has said as president he can do whatever he wants. He has expressed admiration for the likes of Russia President Vladimir Putin and Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban, two of the world’s leading autocrats, He has indicated he will follow the Constitution when it suits his purposes, is campaigning under the banner “America First’’ with ultranationalist implications, acknowledges he will use the Justice Department to attack his enemies and unleash the military on “enemies of the state” – Democrats, of course, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker from San Francisco – who aren’t sold on his being the second coming.
And there is no reason to expect him to accept the outcome if he fails to gain a second term.
That pretty much dots the I’s and crosses the t’s. If this isn’t fascism, I’ll be glad to listen to an explanation. His unrestrained, vicious rhetoric plays a role in all this, and his incredible narcissism, appointing himself the only one to solve the nation’s ills, fills out the application form.
Regardless, upwards of 70 million voters will mark their ballots for Trump on Nov. 5, basically preferring his methods to democracy. Many cite his handling of the economy, which came crashing down as a result of his mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis, for their desire to return him to the White House.
It was often said that Mussolini, who founded the National Fascist Party in Italy and served as prime minister and eventually dictator — siding with Germany in WWII before his own people shot him in 1945 — remained in political control because he made the trains run on time. It wasn’t true. And anyone who believes even half the lies Trump continuously circulates about the economy and otherwise is only kidding themselves.
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Written by Bill Straub, a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. Cross-posted from Link NKY.
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