Mitch McConnell Has A Fight (Or Two) On His Hands

Newrepublic.com ^ | 8/5/13 | Alec MacGillis

[cotton1706]

MAYFIELD, Ky. – That Mitch McConnell really does have a reelection fight on his hands was apparent to me even before I got to Fancy Farm, the glorious western Kentucky combo of county fair and old-fashioned political hoedown. I could tell it as soon as I stepped inside the community center in Calvert City that was hosting the local GOP warm-up event on Friday night, the evening prior. If the room had been any more low energy, they might’ve had to bring in one of those wind turbines that people like to scorn in coal country, just to keep the electrons flowing. A very elderly man with a shirt in the design of the Stars-and-Stripes hunched over a small boom-box blaring some patriotic fife-and-drums and a sound system that kept screeching feedback. A few dozen fellow seniors inched down the buffet table. There was a good explanation for the low mood: the beloved county party chairman was seriously ailing at the hospital in Nashville, two hours away.

But there was also a distinct lack of excitement about the man of the hour, who was on the schedule to appear but had left late from Washington. Misti Drew, a GOP county commissioner, gave a more candid answer than I expected when I sought her appraisal of McConnell’s reelection prospects: “Alison is going to give us a good challenge, and our challenge is to connect with the voters in a way that’s more charismatic.”

A minute later came a reminder that Alison Lundergan Grimes, McConnell’s Democratic challenger, is not the only person McConnell needs to worry about. Lingering in the room was David Adams, a conservative activist who ran the stunning primary campaign of Rand Paul in 2010, and who, while not yet formally involved in this year’s race, predicted that McConnell would meet the same fate from his own Tea Party challenger, businessman Matt Bevin, even if McConnell had done his best to co-opt Paul and his followers, in part by hiring as his campaign manager Jesse Benton, who replaced Adams for Paul’s general election push. “Mitch McConnell needs to retire,” Adams said, matter-of-factly. “And he needs to do it before the primary so he doesn’t get embarrassed.”

Mitch McConnell is not going to retire, because he is thisclose to achieving his dream of becoming Majority Leader of the United States Senate. But he is facing a serious challenge back in his home state, enough so for some prognosticators to now judge his race a toss-up. This challenge is being described in many accounts as a left-right vise, with Grimes on one side and Bevin on the other. Which technically it is. But the challenge is so formidable because both the Democrats and the Tea Party cohort in Kentucky are hitting McConnell on the same weak spot: scorning him as a little-loved Washington creature (29 years and counting) who is out only for himself. What struck me over the weekend was how relentlessly, almost giddily, this line of attack from was being delivered from both sides, with a bravado that suggested little fear of McConnell’s vaunted political artillery, and quite a lot of confidence in his vulnerability.

“The thing about Mitch McConnell is that he’s become the ultimate paper tiger,” said Adams, who’s been keeping himself busy between campaigns filing lawsuits against the state over Obamacare and corporate-welfare incentives. “He runs his campaign through intimidation and this fear that he’s this all powerful Wizard of Oz, but when you go up against him and hit he bleeds, and I think he bleeds a lot.”

Over at the Democratic warm-up event, in a jam-packed convention room at a lakeside resort, state officials and candidates took turns taking shots at McConnell in tones striking for their populist fervor – for Northeasterners who’d heard all about the decline of the Democratic Party in the South and Appalachia, it’s bracing to be reminded that many of the Democrats who still remain in those parts retain more of the party’s old FDR fire than many of their coastal counterparts (it’s worth remembering that Kentucky retains a strong labor presence – unlike Michigan and Indiana, it is not yet “right-to-work”). State Treasurer Todd Hollenbach charged, “The only thing our senior senator has cared about is the almighty dollar” in the form of “personal enrichment and campaign finance.” State auditor Adam Edelen, a likely candidate for governor, said McConnell had “build his entire career to advance his own political power,” and, after noting that McConnell’s sway had done nothing for the 1,100 workers at the about-to-close nuclear plant in Paducah, declared: “He is a giant, but he is a giant for the bad guys.” Then came Grimes, the secretary of state and daughter of a well-known former state senator and power broker, Jerry Lundergan. Only 34, Grimes can come across as scripted and unsteady at first, especially when she’s talking about her party’s agenda (she’s a ways from getting her answers on Obamacare down pat, for one thing.) But she gains ease and fluency as her stump speech turns to McConnell, as if her scorn for him is quite deep in her bones. One might expect it to be jarring to watch a young woman with a very proper bearing going into attack mode, but Grimes has somehow managed to make it seem as if her line attack is rooted in her propriety: as she tells it, McConnell is an affront to the good people of Kentucky, is somehow beneath them. Her favorite and most effective line is to charge McConnell with governing “out of spite,” drawing the word out in a long, genteel Kentucky drawl that only underscores the regretful disapproval of McConnell. While she herself doesn’t “agree on everything with the president” – Obama was never mentioned by name at the event – that doesn’t mean that McConnell has to be “so petty and so small” in his opposition to him. She evokes the “giants” that Kentucky once sent to the Senate and laments that McConnell falls so short of them. It is progressivism mint-julep style, with plenty of Kentucky chauvinism to sweeten the mix.

Grimes hits McConnell for some actual votes – against the Violence Against Women Act renewal, against raising the minimum wage – but above all casts him as generally just gumming up the works: “There is a disease of dysfunction in Washington and Senator McConnell is right at the middle of it.” After so many years of seeing Republicans effectively tar Barack Obama with the Washington mess they gleefully helped create, it is quite clarifying to see the dysfunction charge being brought against the man who, quite proudly, has done more to build the logjam than anyone.

[cotton1706]

Sorry, forgot to click off the “exerpt” button.

[Alex Murphy]

....there was also a distinct lack of excitement about the man of the hour, who was on the schedule to appear but had left late from Washington. Misti Drew, a GOP county commissioner, gave a more candid answer than I expected when I sought her appraisal of McConnell’s reelection prospects: “Alison is going to give us a good challenge, and our challenge is to connect with the voters in a way that’s more charismatic.” A minute later came a reminder that Alison Lundergan Grimes, McConnell’s Democratic challenger, is not the only person McConnell needs to worry about.

Lingering in the room was David Adams, a conservative activist who ran the stunning primary campaign of Rand Paul in 2010, and who, while not yet formally involved in this year’s race, predicted that McConnell would meet the same fate from his own Tea Party challenger, businessman Matt Bevin, even if McConnell had done his best to co-opt Paul and his followers, in part by hiring as his campaign manager Jesse Benton, who replaced Adams for Paul’s general election push. “Mitch McConnell needs to retire,” Adams said, matter-of-factly. “And he needs to do it before the primary so he doesn’t get embarrassed.”

Ping for later

[Georgia Girl 2]

“our challenge is to connect with the voters in a way that’s more charismatic”

Good luck with that one. Old Mitch is about as charismatic as wood fungus. :-)