Something’s not right with Mitch McConnell
Mitch McConnell has never been half as savvy as the media has always insisted he is. But he is plenty savvy. So much so that we’ve grown accustomed to seeing Senate Republicans approach any given situation with at least some degree of strategy and cohesion, win or lose. That’s why this past week has been so jarring.
It was clear from the start that Senate Republicans weren’t going to be able stop Ketanji Brown Jackson from being confirmed no matter what, and that two or three of them would even end up voting for her. Senate Republicans were clearly only looking to use her hearings to amplify their midterm messaging. But that didn’t exactly work out.
Senate Republicans wanted to push the Critical Race Theory lie, but their questions were unfocused and they couldn’t seem to get it to stick. Then they tried to push the “what is the definition of a woman” narrative, but did it so ham fistedly, they may have even cost themselves votes in the midterms. This was far from the coherent and fairly savvy messaging that one would have expected from Mitch McConnell-controlled Senate Republicans.
It was enough to make you wonder if these increasingly deranged new Senate Republicans are just so far out there that even McConnell can’t herd these cats, or if it’s McConnell himself who’s slipping.
Then came McConnell’s interview with Jonathan Swan. Not only did McConnell come off poorly in the interview, it was a huge mistake on his part to even agree to do the interview. Everyone knows how skilled Swan is at slicing and dicing his interview targets when he gets them on camera. Even if it had gone well for McConnell, what could he have possibly hoped to gain from it? Worse, McConnell vastly overestimated his own ability to fend Swan off. That’s frankly a mistake you tend to see from fading villains who have lost a step.
So it’s fair to say that something isn’t right with Mitch McConnell. He’s either failing to provide cohesive direction for Republican Senators, or that direction is being ignored. And he’s now exposing himself to risky interviews that he shouldn’t even be doing, only to come off poorly in them. McConnell is behaving more like Trump by the minute. It’s worth watching to see whether McConnell is merely having an off week for some reason, or if he’s in some kind of serious decline.
