On 1/30/11, Keith In Köln <keithintampa@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 7:27 PM, Tommy News <tommysnews@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Mitch McConnell raised the art of GOP obstructionism to new levels.
>>
>> McConnell could chart new course in Senate
>>
>> By Karen Tumulty
>> Washington Post Staff Writer
>> Sunday, January 30, 2011
>>
>> ELIZABETHTOWN, KY. - In the first two years of Barack Obama's
>> presidency, Mitch McConnell raised the art of obstructionism to new
>> levels. When McConnell and his united GOP troops couldn't stop things
>> from getting through the Senate, they made sure the Democrats paid a
>> heavy price for winning.
>>
>> But now, the Senate minority leader who used to refer to himself as
>> "the abominable no-man" faces a very different challenge: Can he
>> actually deliver?
>>
>> "The first two years, it was frankly pretty simple. From my point of
>> view, they didn't try to do anything in the political center in the
>> first two years, so there was no particular appeal" in trying to get
>> things done, McConnell said in an interview as he traveled his home
>> state during a recent recess. "The biggest difference will be deciding
>> when we are actually in a position to work with the administration -
>> and when we aren't."
>>
>>
>> Bipartisanship, of course, is just about everyone's favorite tune
>> these days. But for McConnell - who has some of the best tactical
>> instincts in modern Washington - the choices ahead are pivotal.
>>
>> Having a new Republican majority in the House and six new GOP
>> senators, his hand is stronger. But with more power comes higher
>> expectations. The Republicans' political gains are fragile, and voters
>> - who have tossed a party out in each of the past three elections -
>> have shown they will not tolerate politicians who don't produce
>> results.
>>
>> McConnell said the window for doing that is small, maybe six to nine
>> months, before the presidential campaign overtakes everything else.
>>
>> The potential for doing business with the Obama administration is
>> there, however, as evidenced by the deal-making last month between
>> McConnell and Vice President Biden. It produced a tax cut - and
>> McConnell's first-ever invitation to a bill-signing ceremony at the
>> Obama White House, where the president lauded their "extraordinary
>> work."
>>
>> The vice president and the GOP leader now speak frequently on the
>> phone. And on Feb. 11, Biden will join him for a conference on Senate
>> leadership at a location that is both close to McConnell's heart and a
>> beneficiary of his fundraising prowess: the University of Louisville's
>> McConnell Center.
>>
>> It's a new relationship for a Republican leader who didn't have a
>> one-on-one meeting with the president until more than a year and a
>> half into Obama's term.
>>
>> "It was just business. I wasn't relevant to their business in the
>> 111th Congress and I understood that," McConnell said. "Things have
>> shifted."
>>
>> At the same time, McConnell is crucial to pushing forward his own
>> party's conservative agenda. And he has said that ensuring that Obama
>> is a one-term president is his "top political priority."
>>
>> While the new House speaker, John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), will probably
>> be able to get pretty much anything he wants in his chamber, the
>> Senate could be the burial ground for those initiatives. That was the
>> case the last time Republicans took charge of the House in 1995, even
>> though the GOP also held a narrow majority in the Senate.
>>
>> Marshaling his troops is something McConnell did extraordinarily well
>> in the last Congress, when it took every one of his 41 members hanging
>> together to block things with a filibuster.
>>
>> But now, said Republican Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.), "we will have to go
>> more on offense."
>>
>> In McConnell's view, that opportunity arises from the electoral map.
>>
>> "Wholly aside from the Republicans, there may be Democrats anxious to
>> cooperate with us," the Republican leader said. "You've got 23 of them
>> up in 2012, a number of them in red states. They may be quite anxious
>> to look a lot more Republican in the next two years, which could mean
>> that we're not just talking about getting 41. We're talking about
>> getting 60."
>>
>> Democrats are skeptical he will get far. "He's right there will be
>> members who will vote with his caucus on some issues," said Majority
>> Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). But Durbin noted that when Democratic
>> leaders last month polled their new caucus on the question of
>> repealing Obama's health-care law - which McConnell has vowed to bring
>> to a vote in the Senate - they were reassured to discover that "he
>> would not have received 50 votes."
>>
>>
>> A Senate Democratic leadership aide said that Majority Leader Harry M.
>> Reid (D-Nev.) finds McConnell hard to figure out because he is slow to
>> commit when they negotiate. "He does not show his hand," said the
>> aide, who was granted anonymity to speak freely.
>>
>> "He's a very tough negotiator," agreed recently retired senator
>> Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who worked closely with McConnell on
>> politically sensitive legislation revamping election procedures in the
>> wake of the 2000 presidential recount. "But if he gives his word, it's
>> as good as anyone's in politics. I always found he was pretty good for
>> a handshake."
>>
>> Even with greater numbers on his side, McConnell will have to contend
>> with tensions from within, especially with the tea party
>> reinforcements who have bolstered the ranks of a truculent
>> conservative wing. That faction on the right is unofficially led by
>> Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who is often at odds with McConnell.
>>
>> Tea partyers regard McConnell with some suspicion. In his home state's
>> Republican Senate primary last year, he made a rare break from
>> intraparty neutrality and supported the establishment pick, Kentucky
>> Secretary of State Trey Grayson, against their candidate - and the
>> ultimate victor -Rand Paul.
>>
>> But even that was a characteristic act of calculation - albeit a wrong
>> one - for McConnell, who dominates his home-state politics as few
>> others senators have.
>>
>> "A lot of it was concern about keeping the seat," acknowledged
>> Grayson, "and that if we lost a seat in his home state, it would
>> weaken him."
>>
>> McConnell moved quickly, once the primary was over, to close ranks
>> with Paul. "He was able to put it aside," Grayson said. "If there's a
>> loss, he learns his lesson, and he moves on."
>>
>> 'Several moves ahead'
>>
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>>
>> Hard-line partisan or deft pragmatist? Master legislator or
>> win-at-any-cost hatchet man? In 41/2 terms in the Senate, McConnell
>> has been every one of those things, and sometimes all of them at once.
>> He is hard to get to know - even for his Senate colleagues - but those
>> on both sides of the aisle agree that McConnell is far more complex
>> than the opaque, purse-lipped image he deliberately presents.
>>
>> "He's mean, smart and ruthless," said an Obama adviser, who did not
>> want to be quoted by name criticizing someone who could have so much
>> influence on the fate of the president's agenda.
>>
>> "He's always thinking several moves ahead," said Sen. John Cornyn
>> (Tex.), who heads the Senate Republicans' campaign committee. "He has
>> learned the ways of the Senate to an extent that no one else I have
>> seen has. It's a combination of understanding the Senate and
>> understanding people."
>>
>> "I wouldn't count him among the ideologues," said Sen. John F. Kerry
>> (D-Mass.). "He's a very practical person."
>>
>>
>> Yet some who have observed McConnell over the years wonder about his
>> principles. "He embraces the permanent campaign and the partisan war
>> very easily," said Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the
>> Brookings Institution. "There seems to be no second-thinking about
>> whether this is the right thing to do, or whether this is good for the
>> country."
>>
>> The consummate Washington insider, McConnell is also something of a
>> homebody who seems to have little regard for the trappings of power.
>> His wife, former labor secretary Elaine Chao, said: "I call him my
>> low-maintenance husband. He does his own laundry. He goes grocery
>> shopping. He cooks - he's a better cook than I am."
>>
>> McConnell says his character was shaped by an episode that he can't
>> even remember: a two-year battle against polio that began when he was
>> a toddler.
>>
>> With his father fighting overseas in World War II, his desperate
>> mother took him to Warm Springs, Ga., where Franklin D. Roosevelt got
>> his physical therapy. She was told that she would have to keep her
>> only child from walking for two years, and to administer four
>> 45-minute sessions of therapy each day, or he would live the rest of
>> his life in leg braces.
>>
>> "I've always felt that it had a big impact on me in terms of focus,
>> discipline, and if you stick to it even under adverse circumstances,
>> you may succeed," he said. McConnell ultimately had a normal
>> childhood, and even played baseball. But colleagues say they notice he
>> does have difficulty walking downstairs.
>>
>> As hard-nosed as he is about winning, McConnell sounds surprisingly
>> idealistic when he describes his days as a young congressional intern
>> and Senate aide in the 1960s.
>>
>> It was a time when Congress got big things done by working across
>> party lines for a purpose larger than politics. McConnell, whose
>> father had served on the board of the Louisville Urban League,
>> recalled being on the Mall during the March on Washington in 1963,
>> though he was too far away to actually hear Martin Luther King Jr.'s
>> "I Have a Dream" speech. He witnessed the bipartisan effort it took to
>> break a Senate filibuster on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and
>> maneuvered himself "inconspicuously in the back of the room" when
>> Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in the Capitol Rotunda
>> in 1965.
>>
>> "I thought it was a very inspiring place. I greatly admired a number
>> of the people that I observed as a lowly staffer," McConnell said. "I
>> decided I wanted to take a shot at it. I didn't know what the chances
>> would be or when the opportunity would come, but I decided I wanted to
>> see if maybe I could become a senator myself."
>>
>> Learning how money talks
>>
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>> Discussion Policy CLOSEComments that include profanity or personal
>> attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed
>> from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain
>> "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed.
>> Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our
>> posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other
>> policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing
>> commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the
>> content that you post.
>>
>> The 1984 election produced a class of Senate freshmen heavy on
>> pedigree and political star power. Al Gore of Tennessee. John Kerry of
>> Massachusetts. Phil Gramm of Texas. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.
>> Tom Harkin of Iowa.
>>
>> "I was kind of the accident," McConnell said. The new senator from
>> Kentucky, whose only previous elected office had been county
>> executive, was known only for the expensive and brutal campaign ad
>> that got him elected.
>>
>> Produced by former Nixon media adviser and future Fox News President
>> Roger Ailes, the spot featured a pack of baying bloodhounds on the
>> hunt for the sitting Democrat, Walter "Dee" Huddleston, as an
>> announcer accused him of missing votes to pick up big speaking fees in
>> exotic locales. McConnell had been more than 30 points down when he
>> put the ad on the air, but it transformed the race.
>>
>> When early polls came in showing McConnell on the verge of becoming
>> the first Republican to win statewide in Kentucky in 16 years, "the
>> word was that the champagne corks were being popped all over
>> Washington," he recalled. "They figured if Mitch McConnell was
>> winning, we must be in the middle of a landslide."
>>
>>
>> In fact, Republicans lost a seat that year, and McConnell turned out
>> to be the only one to beat a Democratic incumbent. His early
>> experience taught McConnell two things that have guided him since: the
>> value of money in politics, and the power of going negative.
>>
>> He would develop an expertise in campaign finance law and devote much
>> of his career to blocking restrictions on political money - an issue
>> that had relatively little resonance with the public at large, but one
>> that his colleagues regard as their political lifeblood.
>>
>> "This is an issue on which he made his bones internally in the
>> Senate," said Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer, a leading
>> activist for campaign finance reform who opposed McConnell. "It has
>> been central to his career in the Senate and his rise to Senate
>> Republican leader."
>>
>> McConnell's first leadership post, as head of the campaign committee,
>> also put him in charge of fundraising. That money built a reservoir of
>> gratitude among his colleagues. But McConnell also immersed himself in
>> the institution itself: its rhythms, its rivalries, its arcane
>> procedures. He keeps confidences close, and spreads credit widely.
>>
>> If McConnell has a role model in the job, he said, it is, ironically
>> enough, a Democrat - the fiercely partisan and intensely disciplined
>> George J. Mitchell, who served as majority leader from 1989 to 1995.
>>
>> And unlike many other Senate leaders, McConnell never entertained
>> presidential ambitions. "It is somewhat helpful to have just one
>> agenda," he said.
>>
>> But while that agenda may be shifting, the Senate Republican leader's
>> focus hasn't.
>>
>> "I have a lot of discussions with the White House that I didn't used
>> to have. I think we'll have a lot more interaction," McConnell said.
>> "They have obviously decided they are going in a different direction.
>> When they basically adopt our positions, I expect we'll have a lot of
>> interaction."
>>
>>
>> More:
>>
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/29/AR2011012904547_4.html
>>
>> --
>> Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
>> Have a great day,
>> Tommy
>>
>> --
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>
> --
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--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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