My RedState post on Mitch McConnell and Merrick Garland.

Found here.  Short version: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to refuse to cave on this nomination.  I’m actually having difficulty thinking of ways McConnell could improve on his current performance. I’d be amazed, but I’m too busy trying to figure out how to relaibly replicate the effect.

Mitch McConnell is being stone cold on this SCotUS thing.

I mean, dang.

I cannot for the life of me think of any significant way that Mitch McConnell could have improved on this response. I mean, sure, you could probably find something to quibble over. But that’s just for finding things to quibble over.

Mitch McConnell shivs the right back. …Like, frankly, a boss.

Via my RedState colleague Joe Cunningham comes this heartwarming tale of the right boot applied to the right backside at just the right moment:

Republicans have promised Bill Cassidy a seat on the Senate’s energy committee if he defeats Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana’s runoff election next month, potentially undercutting one of her main arguments for re-election.

Landrieu has repeatedly touted the importance of her seat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in her campaign for a fourth term representing a state with a robust oil and gas industry.

While she will no longer serve as the committee’s chair in the GOP-led Senate in the next Congress, Landrieu has campaigned hard on her place as the committee’s senior Democrat — and Cassidy’s inability to get a seat on the panel as a freshman senator.

Joe’s impressed, as am I: Mary Landrieu has just crossed Mitch McConnell off of her Christmas card list. As I noted on Twitter (and Joe was kind enough to link to), this is the sort of thing that you can do when you have a couple of seats’ worth of margin: if Senate control hinged on this McConnell would be actually less likely to make this offer, because it would be seen as being desperate shenanigans.  As it is, it’s just shenanigans, which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in the Senate and will thus pass without much notice.  Plus, it’s a pretty strong suggestion that McConnell likes our chances for flipping the seat (as do I).

More of this, please, Senator McConnell.

Kentucky Democrats launch racial attack against Elaine Chao (Mitch McConnell’s wife). AGAIN.

What the heck is wrong with those people?

A Democrat operative and activist trying to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell from his Kentucky Senate seat is backtracking badly — and trying to cover up — after a race-based attack on McConnell’s wife over the weekend.

And that wife is one of the most accomplished women in America of any ethnicity: Elaine Chao, who spent eight years as Labor secretary under President George W. Bush.

In a series of Twitter posts, the activist, Kathy Groob, slammed McConnell repeatedly for being married to an Asian woman, even though Groob herself launched an angry attack last year on another liberal, progressive Kentucky group that argued bizarrely that Chao’s ethnic background might explain why American companies are opening factories in China.

I wrote about that at the time (“Progress Kentucky: inbred, racist, xenophobic hicks“*): but I must admit that I thought that such behavior was tossed into the same Garbage Dump of Inane Stupidity as was the Ashley Judd campaign.  Imagine my surprise to discover that the Democrats still wanted to use that line of attack, only this time in the service of a somewhat more plausible candidate! …Silly me. I should know by now that you can’t expect Democratic attack hacks to behave in a civilized fashion; you have to make them. Continue reading Kentucky Democrats launch racial attack against Elaine Chao (Mitch McConnell’s wife). AGAIN.

Ain’t that a shame: Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell hate each other.

We’re all really broken up about this, sure:

…it was another ugly yet routine day in the dysfunctional United States Senate. Reid and McConnell can barely stand each other.

Their feud echoes America’s political mood: Polarized. Angry. Untrusting. And it’s a key reason Congress doesn’t work.

But it’s not really a key reason.  Even if Harry Reid was sufficiently neurotypical to try to work with Mitch McConnell more (or, indeed, at all) nothing in Congress would still get done, because the actual key reason why ‘Congress doesn’t work’ is because the House of Representatives refuses to enable Barack Obama’s dysfunctional ideas of what constitutes responsible government.  Which is why we have a bicameral legislature: our government was designed by some of the smartest functional paranoids the world has ever seen.  Our current situation, in other words, is not a failure of the system: it is a defense mechanism of the system. Continue reading Ain’t that a shame: Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell hate each other.

So, Ben Sasse won in Nebraska SEN last night.

And Operation We Are One Big, Happy Fleet is already up and running:

Mitch McConnell’s troops are extending an olive branch to Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse after Sasse said Tuesday that he would “absolutely” support McConnell as Senate majority leader if the Republican conference chooses the Kentucky senator for the post. “I’m a team player and looking forward to supporting whoever our leader is,” Sasse told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd.

Praise from the McConnell camp, which vowed to oppose any candidate, including Sasse, endorsed by the insurgent Senate Conservatives Fund, was forthcoming. A McConnell ally tells National Review Online that Sasse is a “very practical conservative who’s more interested in achieving the right policy outcome than engaging in a quixotic civil war with his own party.” The Sasse campaign, for the time being, is not returning the love. “We’re focused on our get-out-the-vote operation,” says Sasse adviser Jordan Gehrke.

Continue reading So, Ben Sasse won in Nebraska SEN last night.

Alison Lundergan Grimes (D CAND, Kentucky-SEN) is not really living up to expectations.

This does not surprise me at all:

On paper, Alison Lundergan Grimes was the perfect recruit to run against Sen. Mitch McConnell. McConnell’s negatives are high, and Grimes is seen as an attractive (just me, or does she resemble Molly Parker?) young Secretary of State – with potential cultural crossover appeal in the “Bluegrass State.” And it also doesn’t hurt that she happens to be the daughter of former Kentucky Democratic Party Chairman (and Bill Clinton pal) Jerry Lundergan, either.

And indeed, the race is close. But that only belies the fact that Grimes has, thus far, proven to be a mediocre candidate, running a mediocre campaign. And this suggests that McConnell might just be able to survive.

Continue reading Alison Lundergan Grimes (D CAND, Kentucky-SEN) is not really living up to expectations.

Not Ready For Prime Time Watch: Alison Grimes campaign compares Mitch McConnell campaign to Nazis.

Seriously, don’t they have anybody over there who can play this game?

“It reminded me of the feeling our troops must have had when they liberated the European nations after World War II,” state representative Greg Stumbo said at an event for McConnell’s Democratic challenger, Kentucky’s secretary of state Alison Lundergan Grimes. “Can you imagine what it felt like that you were liberating a country?”

“Well, you’re about to liberate your state from the worst reign of misabuse that we’ve seen in the last 30 years,” he added.

Continue reading Not Ready For Prime Time Watch: Alison Grimes campaign compares Mitch McConnell campaign to Nazis.

Alison Lundergan Grimes pledges to ritually sacrifice herself in Kentucky.

That poor woman.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell got a challenger for his U.S. Senate seat on Monday and her name is Alison Lundergan Grimes.

“I have met with my supporters. We have had a great conversation and determined and decided that we can next make the best move, the best difference in the commonwealth of Kentucky by running for the U.S. Senate,”  Grimes said at a news conference in FrankfortKy.

Although, admittedly, this is kind of funny: Continue reading Alison Lundergan Grimes pledges to ritually sacrifice herself in Kentucky.

Mitch McConnell & John Cornyn warn Big Sports about supporting Obamacare.

If you were wondering whether the Senate GOP caucus wants to, plans to, and is in a good position to, be in the majority again after next year’s elections… stop wondering. This was unsubtle:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) warned six professional sports leagues on Friday not to promote ObamaCare or partner with the Obama administration on efforts concerning the law.

In letters to the leagues released Friday, McConnell and Cornyn cited an announcement by federal Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that she is in talks with the NFL, the NBA and others about campaigns to educate the public about healthcare reform.

McConnell and Cornyn warned NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and his peers that launching such campaigns would damage their leagues’ reputations.

It would also have been unthinkable for the Senate GOP to be this blunt in, say, 2009 or 2010. Or even 2011.  Amazing what happens when a god turns out to be a man, after all? – Oh, yes, it’s all Barack Obama’s fault.  He could have prevented this… if only Obama was good enough at being President, of course. Continue reading Mitch McConnell & John Cornyn warn Big Sports about supporting Obamacare.