Opinion: Mitch
McConnell, naked and afraid
Opinion by
Columnist
July 9, 2021|
On rare
occasions, Mitch McConnell can summon the ability to mimic human emotions.
Ten
days ago, for example, the Senate Republican leader was asked, at a Chamber of
Commerce event, to imagine: “You’re stranded on a desert island and you can
only have one companion. Your choices are Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton
or Jimmy Carter. Who do you choose?
McConnell
had little hesitation. “Biden and I did four bipartisan deals during the Obama
administration. I consider him a personal friend,” he said. “I was the only
Republican who went to his son Beau’s funeral. So that would be an easy choice.
I think Biden is a first-rate person.”
McConnell’s
desert-island answer gave me the unfortunate mental image of the two
septuagenarians competing together on Discovery’s reality TV show “Naked and
Afraid,” in which an unclothed pair are dropped in the wilderness for 21 days with
only one survival item apiece.
For
reasons of good taste, I picture our contestants clothed:
marooned
Biden wearing Ray-Bans and shirtsleeves and marooned McConnell in pinstriped
suit. Biden’s survival item is a cup for boiling water. McConnell’s survival
item is a filibuster. Instead of squabbling over campsite placement, they’re
bickering about covid relief.
That’s
just what our two castaways did this week. At an event in his home state,
McConnell complained about
Biden’s “wildly out of proportion” $2 trillion American Rescue Plan — while in
the same breath mentioning what a boon it will be for Kentucky:
“Not a
single member of my party voted for it,” he said. “I didn’t vote for it. But
you’re going to get a lot more money. Cities and counties in Kentucky are
getting close to seven or 800 million dollars. If you add up the total amount
that’ll come into our state, $4 billion, that’s twice what we sent in last
year.”
I hate
this windfall that will be so awesome for my constituents!
McConnell’s
struggle for coherence prompted Biden to needle his desert-island pal.
“Mitch
McConnell loves our programs,” he teased. “He’s bragging about it in Kentucky.”
The
confusion isn’t limited to covid relief. McConnell takes every opportunity to
undermine this “first-rate person” and “personal friend” — both politically and
personally.
McConnell waited more than
five weeks before acknowledging Biden’s victory, allowing Donald Trump and his
allies to delegitimize Biden — and the election — in the eyes of tens of
millions of Trump supporters. McConnell didn’t speak up because he wanted
Republicans to win Senate runoffs in Georgia. “Look, we need the president in
Georgia and so we cannot be frontally attacking him right now,” McConnell told the attorney
general, according to Jonathan Karl of ABC News.
McConnell withheld support for
the new Senate’s organizing resolution for weeks, delaying consideration
of his friend Biden’s nominees.
Asked
about Trump’s election lies, McConnell instead attacked his
friend. “One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration,”
he said, also tagging friend Biden with the “socialist” moniker.
McConnell
vowed to fight the covid relief legislation “in every way that we can.” He
filibustered bipartisan legislation to create a commission to examine the Jan.
6 insurrection. He filibustered equal-pay
legislation requiring employers to show that they don’t
discriminate against women. He filibustered voting
rights legislation and upended bipartisan talks on legislation to address
police brutality.
He has
so far failed to endorse bipartisan
infrastructure legislation, while saying he would wage a “hell of a fight” if
Democrats go it alone.
And he
stands by as his staff portrays Biden as senile. McConnell aides “have taken to
describing the White House chief of staff as ‘Prime Minister Klain,’” the
Hill reported, attempting “to
undercut public perception of Biden as a leader who is totally with it.
With
friends like these …
McConnell
is not a man you’d want in your foxhole — or on your desert island. But his
treachery would make for good television. I propose a “Naked and Afraid”
spinoff: "In the Swamp.”
Episode
One: Biden erects a tent. McConnell knocks it down. Biden builds a hut.
McConnell burns it down. Biden digs a shelter in the ground. McConnell fills it
with scorpions and snakes.
Episode
Two: The survivalists go fishing. Biden spears a fish. Biden goes foraging for
kindling to cook the fish but returns to discover that McConnell has eaten the
whole fish raw. McConnell blames Biden for his upset stomach.
Episode
Three: McConnell introduces Biden to an orangutan he has befriended with
blaze-orange fur. The orangutan destroys their camp, eats all their food,
contaminates their water supply, then attacks the Discovery camera crew. But
McConnell tells Biden he cannot stop the orangutan because there is a Senate
runoff in Georgia.
Episode
Four: Biden “taps out” and calls for a helicopter evacuation. McConnell, chased
by the orangutan, clambers aboard, too. The men have survived only
three days together. Each ends with a PRS (Primitive Survival Rating) score
of zero.