“There simply is no more loathsome creature walking the political landscape than the Majority Leader of the United States Senate”

“As its first act in the new Congress, the equally new Democratic majority passed something called House Resolution 1. It was a massive anti-corruption measure aimed at restoring the credibility of American elections and safeguarding the franchises for those whose right to vote had been assaulted by 30 years of conservative mischief, both in Washington and in the states.

“It advocated a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United. It proposed making federal Election Day a federal holiday, and it forbade both partisan gerrymandering and voter purges. It also mandated that the president and vice president reveal the previous ten years of tax returns. (Can't imagine what gave them that idea.) All in all, it was a clear declaration of support for the right of all eligible citizens to vote, and for their votes to have meaning.

“On the op-ed page of the Washington Post—Jesus, Hiatt. Really?—Mitch McConnell called it ‘a power grab’:

“‘It would also empower that newly partisan FEC to track and catalogue more of what you say. It would broaden the type of speech the commission can define as ‘campaign-related’ and thus regulate. Many more Americans would have to notify the feds when spending even small amounts of money on speech or else be penalized. That partisan FEC would also get wide latitude to determine when a nonprofit’s speech has crossed that fuzzy ‘campaign-related’ line and then forcibly publicize the group’s private supporters.

“‘Apparently the Democrats define ‘democracy’ as giving Washington a clearer view of whom to intimidate and leaving citizens more vulnerable to public harassment over private views. Under this bill, you’d keep your right to free association as long as your private associations were broadcast to everyone. You’d keep your right to speak freely so long as you notified a distant bureaucracy likely run by the same people you criticized. The bill goes so far as to suggest that the Constitution needs an amendment to override First Amendment protections.

“That's bad enough, but here comes the line that, if the WaPo opinion editors had any guts, they would have either cut from the piece, or killed it entirely.

“‘I’m as firm a supporter as anyone of vigorous debate and a vibrant political discourse — but I don’t think Americans see an urgent need for their tax dollars to be used to bankroll robocalls and attack ads, including for candidates they dislike.

“Jesus, Hiatt. Seriously? Let's ask Elizabeth Warren how firm McConnell's support for vigorous debate is. Hell, let's ask Merrick Garland how much he enjoyed Mitch McConnell's vibrant political discourse.

“There simply is no more loathsome creature walking the political landscape than the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. You have to go back to McCarthy or McCarran to find a Senate leader who did so much damage to democratic norms and principles than this yokel from Kentucky. Trump is bad enough, but he's just a jumped-up real-estate crook who's in over his head. McConnell is a career politician who knows full well what he's doing to democratic government and is doing it anyway because it gives him power, and it gives the rest of us a wingnut federal judiciary for the next 30 years. There is nothing that this president* can do that threatens McConnell's power as much as it threatens the survival of the republic, and that's where we are.

“McConnell declared himself in opposition to Barack Obama right from the first day in office. There's even video. Most noxiously, in reference to our present moment, when Obama came to him and asked him to present a united front against the Russian ratfcking that was enabling El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago, McConnell turned him down, flat. Moreover, he told Obama that, if Obama went public, McConnell would use it as a political hammer on Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Obama should have done it anyway, god knows.) McConnell issued a watery denial of these charges, but there's no good goddamn reason to believe him.

“He doesn't have the essential patriotism god gave a snail. He pledges allegiance to his donors, and they get what they want. He's selling out his country, and he's doing it in real-time and out in the open. This is worse than McCarthy or McCarran ever were. Mitch McConnell is the thief of the nation's soul” (There Is No More Loathsome Creature Walking Our Political Landscape Than Mitch McConnell (Yes, that includes the jumped-up real-estate crook in the White House))by Charles P. Pierce.