Legacy Thread

[basserdan]

Cocaine Mitch rubs his hands together and wolfishly whispers to Dems to be careful what they wish for on that filibuster

By Monica Showalter
January 12, 2022

Is there anything better than a Republican with some fight still left in him? We saw Ted Cruz redeem himself in his questioning of an FBI official on the Jan. 6 riots.

Better still, we're seeing the return of Cocaine Mitch.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is telling Democrats now talking up busting the filibuster, which Joe Biden now also is calling for, to be verrrrry careful what they wish for.

You can almost see him rubbing his hands together and putting on a wolfish grin as he makes his calls.

According to the Washington Examiner:

Senate Republicans say if Democrats vote to end the filibuster, the GOP will use the new rule to force votes on a string of Republican bills that would stand a good chance of passing in the evenly divided Senate.

In a move that would turn the Democratic plan to end the filibuster on its head, Republicans say they’ll bring up legislation that can easily garner 50 GOP votes and a few Democratic ones. This could advance Republican measures under the rule change Democrats are considering that would lower the 60-vote threshold to 51 votes. https://washex.am/3no2vOj

Axios added:

What he's saying: "If my colleague tries to break the Senate to silence those millions of Americans, we will make their voices heard in this chamber in ways that are more inconvenient for the majority and this White House than what anybody has seen in living memory." https://bit.ly/31Z3mgS

Some of those things on the McConnell wish list have been noodling about among Republicans for a while.

Back in April, McConnell told the Wall Street Journal:

“How would they feel about a Republican Senate operating with 51 votes majority deciding that they need to have a national right-to-work law?” asked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) at a recent press conference, referring to legislation that would bar mandatory union fees.

Other possibilities, according to Mr. McConnell and fellow Senate Republicans: anti-abortion bills, tighter election and immigration laws, loosening of environmental regulations, concealed-carry gun reciprocity in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and defunding cities that have adopted so-called sanctuary policies to limit cooperation with immigration authorities. https://on.wsj.com/3rfVznn

Border wall? Right to work? Keystone XL? Ending abortion? Mandatory deportation for criminal illegals? Those are some of the items on the list that McConnell could easily get through with a little help from his Democrat friends (he'd only need to peel off one or two at this point) or, easier still, when the Republicans retake the Senate in 2022. McConnell says he's got a dozen of these items in mind right now. That's hardball.

If these wish-list items still somehow can't come up for a vote, they can come up for a debate, one that would force Democrats to be counted on their unpopular positions, should the 60-vote filibuster and go to a 51-vote majority as Democrats wish:

Other candidates for action include a proposal sponsored by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) to codify the Trump administration’s revised Waters of the United States rule, which the Biden administration said in November it would scrap.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers announced in November the restoration of an Obama-era rule expanding the number of waterways protected under the Clean Water Act.

Another proposal sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) would bar money appropriated under the 2020 CARES Act or the 2021 American Rescue Plan from going to public elementary and secondary schools that aren’t open for in-person learning.

A third proposal sponsored by Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) would prohibit the Department of Justice from paying settlements to illegal immigrants detained at the U.S.-Mexico border.

It's all so delicious -- like the sight of Wile-e-Coyote cooking up a cartoon bomb for the Road Runner and accidentally detonating it in his own face.

McConnell, for all his malignment on various matters, knows his stuff on the Senate and knows how to use Senate power.

He's redeeming himself with this maneuver, which is so desperately needed in this runaway bus-without-brakes Biden presidency and Congress. McConnell is so skillful he knows how to make Democrats blow themselves up with their own bomb. (bolded for emphasis)

And he's not even waiting for November 2022 to feel his oats, he's getting busy now. He knows which way the winds are blowing, so he's getting busy now.

That's the good Mitch, the Cocaine Mitch (an affectionate, sarcastic nickname derived from Democrat stupidities that even Mitch has said he enjoys.) Mitch knows how to give overbearing, overweening, over-the-top radical Democrats who think they have all the power something to be afraid of.

Attaboy, Mitch; more like this!

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/cocaine_mitch_rubs_his_hands_together_and_wolfishly_whispers_to_dems_to_be_careful_what_they_wish_for_on_that_filibuster.html