Mitch McConnell's resignation and his place in American political history

 Both parties are insane and reprehensible, but while the Democratic Party's descent into lunacy and vileness has been a bottom-up process, driven by academia and activists motivated by the worst ideas in history "learned" from professors spreading those ideas like viruses to infect the body politic, the Republican Party's process has been top-down, with a few figures playing key roles.  Donald Trump is not only obvious for his ubiquity and toxicity.  He really did do tremendous damage to democracy by normalizing constant lying, over the top corruption, violent authoritarianism and just plain immorality.  Yet he could not have won a party nomination had that party not gone insane first.  A sane party does not nominate a man caught on tape bragging about his ability to get away with grabbing women's pussies, who constantly lusts after his own daughter, and that's just the most obvious, personal dimension of his grossness, indisputable to anyone.  The party had to go insane before it nominated him, creating a vicious cycle in the truest sense, wherein the cycle reinforces vice.  Who, then, were the figures who drove the party mad?  Much has been written about the rise of Fox News, and hence about Rupert Murdoch, and yes, he was a critical figure.  The same can be said for Rush Limbaugh.  The creation of an informational echo chamber was an important component.  Yet there were some important politicians who preceded Trump.  Yes, fine, we can laugh about Sarah Palin, except that she normalized stupidity, and that brings in John McCain, and his decision to select Palin as his running mate, but Palin will ultimately be a footnote in American political history.  Two congressional leaders have played vital roles in turning the Republican Party into what it is today, in different but related ways.  Newton Leroy Gingrich, and Mitch McConnell.

Gingrich went from House backbencher to Speaker to laughable presidential candidate to gadfly.  During his presidential campaign, he described himself as a world historical figure, thinking himself the historical equivalent to Charlemagne.  And like Charlemagne, he is now unknown to most Americans because Americans are stupid and worthlessly uneducated, so to some degree, the analogy holds.  Gingrich was forced out of Congress amid the ill-fated impeachment of Bill Clinton, when he managed to lose seats for his party in a midterm election, because among many other things, Newt Gingrich was a moron.  That means, though, that he is out of office.  When Gingrich dies, those of good conscience will spit on his grave and celebrate a significant increase in the average morality of all people living on Earth.  When that happens, if I am still doing this kind of thing-- or perhaps before-- I will do something like what I am doing now and write about what made Gingrich such a destructive force in American politics, but briefly, if you want to know why the GOP is so obsessed with playing games of brinksmanship and legislative hostage-taking instead of just legislating like responsible adults, Gingrich did it.  Gingrich taught them to do it.  It's his fault.

Let us turn, though...

[...............]

Sorrynotsorry, it had to be done.

Let us turn to Mitch McConnell.  I am many things in addition to repetitive.  When the epitaph for American democracy is written it will read: "Murdered in cold blood by Mitch McConnell."

Perhaps you have encountered the following claim about Donald Trump.  He finds the places in our political system that you thought were guarded by rules, but were actually governed by norms, and he violates those norms.  That is not the Trump trick.  That is the McConnell trick.  McConnell is just more savvy.

The Senate is an unusual legislative body, granting extensive power to individual senators.  If everyone uses the full range of his formal powers, the whole body turns into a clusterfuck and nobody gets anything, so it is like a 100-person repeated prisoner's dilemma.  Sure, you can be a rat in one round, and gain something short term, but if you do that, the response is retaliation, and before you know it, that's one fucked cluster.  The Senate can only function when senators exercise restraint in the use of their powers.

McConnell blew up the Senate with terrifying efficacy, and introduced the ethos of total warfare at all times to the Republican Party.  (See the Trump connection?)  When the Senate was established, there was no motion to end debate.  The House had a formal motion to end debate, which would be passed with a majority vote, but the rule was not included in the Senate's package.  Senators could block legislation through the filibuster, but mostly, they did not because they distinguished between opposing legislation and opposing it so much that they would exercise the minoritarian power of the filibuster.  Slowly, pressure built to include a motion to end debate, and in 1917, the Senate adopted the cloture motion.  With 2/3, the Senate could end a filibuster.  Gradually, the filibuster came to be used with increased frequency as the norm was violated.  So, in 1975, the Senate reduced the threshold to 3/5.  By a kind of step function, filibusters increased in frequency, periodically reaching new equilibria, but even so, senators still understood that they could not filibuster everything.

Until Mitch McConnell.  In 2006, when the GOP lost its Senate majority, McConnell adopted the tactic of simply filibustering everything.  The distinction between voting no and filibustering went away.  Kaboom.  Why?  Because he could.  Would it have long-term negative consequences?  Yes, but he didn't care.

Fast-forward, and McConnell forced the use of the nuclear option by blockading the DC Circuit, announcing that the Republicans would filibuster literally any Obama nominee to that court, it did not matter whom, Obama alone among the history of presidents did not get to make appointments.  This was a holy shit move.  This was the announcement that the GOP demanded total control.  Total warfare.

It was McConnell who turned the party into the party of total warfare at all times.  Trump is following the McConnell plan, just more crudely.

Reid had two options.  Either hand the second most important court in the country exclusively to Republicans, or use the nuclear option.  That's really only one choice.  The Democrats did not just use the nuclear option.  McConnell knowingly forced it.  No party could accept what McConnell demanded, which was an ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY INSANE demand.  And he knew it.

And McConnell's reign of destruction was not done.  Scalia died, and before the body was cold, McConnell announced a new "rule."  No Supreme Court confirmations during an election year.  Had anyone ever heard of this rule before?  No.  Of course not.  McConnell made it up .000003 seconds after he learned of Scalia's death, knowing with 100% certainty that he would break it for a Republican president, and if asked about his previous "rule," he'd just tell you to eat shit and die rather than even trying to justify it, fuck off, I'm Mitch McConnell.

Orrin Hatch famously said that Obama could easily nominate and confirm some guy named "Merrick Garland," but of course, Obama would never do that because Obama just wanted to play games.

Obama nominated Garland.  I do not have much respect for Merrick Garland, who had his spine surgically replaced with a wet noodle, but Obama did that.  McConnell cared not at all because McConnell is an actual, true sociopath.  He blockaded a Supreme Court vacancy for a year-- historically unprecedented-- based on a bullshit new rule that he would obviously break, and that is why Neil The Plagiarist Gorsuch is on the Court instead of Merrick Garland, so for all the Republicans crowing about Claudine Gay, if you want any intellectual credibility, take on Gorsuch.

I cannot stomach either.

Fastforward to the entirely predictable death of the stupid and narcissistic Ruth Bader Ginsburg during an election year, and what happens to Mitchy-poo and his new rule of no confirmations in an election year?  Oh, right.  Amy Coney Barrett.  That's what.  Anyone who believed McConnell was probably stupid enough to enroll at Trump University.  Then we got the 2020 election.  It looked to some like Mitch might have sided with democracy.  He voted against conviction, saying that Trump was out of office, and therefore impeachment was improper, even though that had been ruled out of bounds, but he did say that Trump had criminal exposure and he was susceptible to prosecution, having been in the wrong.

What happened?

Oh, right.  The same thing that happened to every Republican not named Liz Cheney [swoon].  If you thought he'd do the right thing, you were not paying attention.  This was Mitch McConnell.

Mitch McConnell is not the absolute worst human being in American political history.  The damage he wrought does not quite reach the lows of the Confederates, for example, and when it comes to truly cartoonish evil, it is difficult for anyone to compete with Donald Trump.  Yet Donald Trump could not have happened had the party not gone insane first, and note the timing.  Note that Mitch started blowing up the Senate in 2006, ten years before Trump's nomination, and he passed on every opportunity to confront Trump, because like all Republicans not named Liz Cheney [swoon], he is ultimately a coward and useless to anyone of virtue.

The Senate has been called the greatest deliberative body in the world.  It's a has-been.  Who dunnit?  Who did it in?  It was McConnell, in the Senate chamber, with a crass will to power.

The great philosophers, like Seneca, liked to imagine that everyone truly understood virtue, even when they did not live up to it.  That even the guilty were pursued by their own conscience.  I am not so optimistic.  McConnell has not been happy of late, with Trump deservedly making his life miserable.  I would like to imagine that McConnell will spend his final years being tormented by personal demons, agonizing over the knowledge of the damage he has wrought.  Trump will probably retake the White House, the GOP goes ever-crazier, McConnell does have some understanding of what is wrong, and his role in it.  I would like to think that he will agonize, and mentally torture himself over what he has done to this country which I love.  Seneca would think so.

I don't think he has enough of a conscience.  I don't think he cares about anything good or decent.  He'll fade away, not with a clear conscience, but with no conscience.

And what of McConnell's replacement?  I have no idea.  It may be someone worse.  Someone Trump-ified.  We may come to miss McConnell.  And that, too, will be McConnell's fault.

"Murdered in cold blood by Mitch McConnell."  Truly, a contemptible thing if ever there was such a thing in American politics.

I ain't no doctor, I ain't no doctor's son, but I can recommend a doctor 'til your doctor comes.  Here's some Dr. John, if I may mix my musical references.