ACVDN Labels McConnell A Regular Republican

While Mitch McConnell was excoriating Democrats for telling then President Bush that he needed to start withdrawing from Iraq, he was busy begging President Bush to withdraw troops from Iraq simply for political expediency.    The hypocrisy of this stance is not surprising to those of us here at ACVDN as we have already labeled Mitch just a run of the mill regular republican acting as republicans always act.

George W. Bush got a lot wrong in his administration, but he certainly did figure out Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell.

In his new memoir, Decision Points, the former president tells of a meeting he held in September 2006 with Mr. McConnell, then the Republican whip in the Senate.    The occupation of Iraq was going horribly, American and Iraqi casualties were rising sharply, costs had mushroomed into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and Iraq was teetering on the brink of full-scale sectarian civil war.     Mr. McConnell was concerned, and he gave the president his advice.

But why was he concerned?     It wasn't because of bloodshed, destruction, a hemorrhaging budget or a slide toward disaster.

He was fearful that the morass in Iraq would cause the Republican Party to take a beating in the approaching mid-term elections.     And what was his advice? He urged the president to “bring some troops home from Iraq” to lessen the political risks, Mr. Bush writes.


This incident, which Sen. McConnell's office has not denied, shines brightly on the contemptible hypocrisy and obsessive partisanship that have come to mark the senator's time in office.

At the time that Sen. McConnell was privately advising Mr. Bush to reduce troop levels in Iraq, he was elsewhere excoriating congressional Democrats who had urged the same thing.     “The Democrat[ic] leadership finally agrees on something unfortunately it's retreat,”   Sen. McConnell had said in a statement on Sept. 5, 2006, about a Democratic letter to Mr. Bush appealing for cuts in troop levels. Sen. McConnell, who publicly was a stout defender of the war and Mr. Bush's conduct of the conflict, accused the Democrats of advocating a position that would endanger Americans and leave Iraqis at the mercy of al-Qaida.

Unless he is prepared to call a former president of his own party a liar, Mr. McConnell has a choice.    He can admit that he did not actually believe the Iraq mission was vital to American security, regardless of what he said at the time.    Or he can explain why the fortunes of the Republican Party are of greater importance than the safety of the United States.


The public has a right to expect its leaders to pursue loftier goals than partisan success.    When voters hear Sen. McConnell these days — at a time of continuing economic hardship — say that Republicans' top priority must be to limit President Obama to a single term, they should ask themselves:  Why does he place greater value on that purely political goal than on American citizens' well-being?


U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District, was highly critical of McConnell's request, and analysts said they were stunned by
Bush's revelation.


“If the story is true, Sen. McConnell will have to explain to the families of all the men and women who sacrificed in Iraq why he was willing to play politics with their lives,” Yarmuth, who was elected in 2006, said in an interview.


What Bush is saying puts McConnell in a bad light, said Michael Desch, chairman of the University of Notre Dame's political science department and formerly director of the University of Kentucky's Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce.

“Because he had been a cheerleader for the president in the war, it makes him look like a bit of a hypocrite,” Desch said of McConnell. “It also makes him look bad because he seems to be trimming his sails in response to electoral politics, which doesn't look very statesmanlike.”


“Wow, it stuns me,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. “It's Darwinian — it's all about survival. …That is not helpful to McConnell.”


In 2006, McConnell was one of Bush's staunchest allies in the Senate, defending the administration's increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.

McConnell even went so far as to force a Senate vote in June 2006 on an amendment that would have called for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by year's end.    The amendment was defeated 93-6.


But according to Bush's memoir, McConnell had a different concern when he met with the president in the Oval Office.    Bush said McConnell “has a sharp political nose, and he smelled trouble.”


“Mr. President,” McConnell is quoted as saying, “your unpopularity is going to cost us control of the Congress.”


Bush wrote that he knew “many Americans were tired of my presidency.”    The party also was in trouble because of scandals, wasteful spending, earmarks and a failure to deliver on Social Security reform, Bush wrote.


Bush said he responded to McConnell: “Well, Mitch, what do you want me to do about it?”


McConnell, the president wrote, answered: “Mr. President, bring some troops home from Iraq.”

So, thats the story.    Nothing unusual.     Just republicans being republicans, talking one way while walking in the opposite direction.      Talk family values while hanging out with hookers or hustling in airport bathrooms.      Talking about helping the people and being a completely controlled tool of big coal.     Hypocrits yes, but just run of the mill regular republicans driven crazy chasing power.      God bless um, they doing the best they can as we say in the south.