CNN Editor-in-Chief Chris Cilliza recently wrote a column in which he posed the question, “Why don’t so many people love Mitch McConnell so much? “

Oh, Chris, my dear, to plunder a sentence from Elizabeth Barret Browning, let me count the ways.

Cilliza cited a Gallup poll showing McConnell is clearly the public’s least esteemed official. Only 34% of those polled expressed approval for the Republican Senate leader from Louisville, while 63% expressed contempt. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, the subject of a relentless condemnation, managed to get a 40 percent approval, six points better than our boy Mitch.

Democratic animosity towards McConnell, Cilliza argued, is natural, given the country’s current political divide, with just 21% of them expressing favor. Likewise, independents don’t have much human utility, registering only 35% approval.

The surprise, in Cilliza’s opinion, is McConnell’s position within his own party, with just 46% support, a status he attributes to the leader standing at the crossroads of the party’s capo di tutti capi, the Orange Ogre himself, former President Donald J. Trump.

McConnell and Trump have been at loggerheads for some time, even though they made it through Trump’s four-year tenure without starting World War III. They couldn’t stand each other, mind you, and every now and then the former president lashes out, like when McConnell refused to budge on his opposition to the elimination of the filibuster rule, which Trump said limited his agenda. , as it was. At the same time, he would praise McConnell to heaven for every legislative victory.

The ultimate, pre-arranged row came when McConnell, knowing when to fold them, admitted that Democrat Joe Biden was the duly elected president of this United States and that it was time to move on, rejecting Trump’s request, which continues to this day, that the election was “rigged”, somehow stolen from him, and that he was the rightful inhabitant of the White House.

Even the Chief, who threw in more than his share, couldn’t stand this level of horse manure and Trump always went out of his way to excommunicate him from the GOP, dubbing McConnell the “old broken crow” and looking for someone – anyone – to replace him in the Republican Senate hierarchy. For the moment, no taker.

The relationship took a very bad turn when McConnell claimed Fearless Leader was responsible for igniting the January 6 insurgency that left the Capitol in ruins and five dead. On Thursday, the first anniversary of one of the saddest incidents in American history, McConnell further alienated himself from the growing authoritarian faction of the GOP – those commonly referred to as Trumpists – when he claimed that Trump had offered a “network of lies ”about the outcome of the 2020 elections and that those who participated in the insurgency were“ criminals ”.

Such statements might normally endear a Republican politician to Democrats, who firmly oppose Trump’s fascist tendencies, by telling the truth in power. Instead, it shows why McConnell is looked down upon and deemed untrustworthy by those on all sides of the political spectrum.

McConnell had a chance to get Trump out and, for once, find himself on the right side of history. He could have favored impeachment but dismissed the idea for bogus reasons, although it is doubtful that a sufficient number of Republican senators could have been assembled to convict anyway. He opposed the creation of an independent commission on January 6 to investigate the uprising, but chose not to do so. In fact, he openly opposed the creation of the panel, prevailing over GOP lawmakers who might otherwise see an investigation as necessary to oppose the measure as a personal favor to him.

Finally, to top it off, McConnell has made it known that he will support Trump if he is the party’s presidential candidate in 2024.

This isn’t exactly a way of appealing to any side – condemning a certain individual as a heretic but acknowledging that he will support the heretic if everyone does.

And that’s definitely not the way to win a chapter in Profiles in Courage.

Cilliza, it seems, underestimates the degree of animosity towards McConnell among Democrats. Republican leaders of the past, like Bob Dole of Kansas and Howard Baker of Tennessee, for example, were professional hardball players, but they understood that they represented everyone, not just the nation’s business interests which contribute to large sums in political accounts. This is why Dole was able to work with Senator George McGovern, D-SD, the party’s presidential candidate in 1972, on the Americans With Disabilities Act. This is why Senator Tom Daschle, D-SD, on Baker’s death in 2014, was able to say: “Howard Baker’s distinguished career as a senator and statesman is the product of his unique ability to gain the trust of even those with whom he fundamentally disagreed. . “

Dole and Baker both had something completely foreign to McConnell – qualms. For them, reaching power was a means to an end. For McConnell, this is the end.

It was this lack of scruples that allowed McConnell to steal a pair of Supreme Court nominations, impose a blockade using obstruction at all times, oppose efforts to protect voting rights. , especially for those in the African American community, and in any case, put the party before the country.

The specifics bill against McConnel on the Democratic side is long and well done. Now he dares, in reference to the January 6 insurgency, that Democrats attempt “to exploit this anniversary to advance partisan political goals that long preceded this event.”

“It is especially breathtaking to hear some Senate Democrats invoke the mob’s attempt to disrupt our country’s standards, rules and institutions as a justification for rejecting our standards, rules and institutions themselves,” McConnell said.
What is amazing is that McConnell began the process of rejecting “our standards, rules and institutions themselves” a long time ago, implementing the strategy of essentially requiring legislation to attract at least 60 people. 100 house votes to be adopted. He changed the rules when it suited him, like making Supreme Court appointments filibuster-proof.

Ironically, McConnell is like Philip Nolan, Hale’s man without a country, shunned on both sides. As EK Hornbeck said of Matthew Harrison Brady, even his friends can’t stand him.

But none of this ever bothered McConnell. He won’t change. You can have popularity. I will take power. And if current trends continue, he could gain even more power in November, with possible changes to the partisan makeup of the Senate Chamber.

McConnell has no friends on the Democratic side and nothing but enemies in the rapidly advancing Trump party. And there are reasons.

Hope that answers your question, Chris.