Posted on 12/15/2002 7:13:58 PM PST by ApesForEvolution
In the Senate, McConnell has a mostly conservative record and high party loyalty. Yet he was willing to penalize a fellow Republican when as Ethics Committee chairman in 1995 he led the investigation of Bob Packwood for sexual harassment; the committee recommended expulsion, and Packwood ultimately resigned. McConnell has been a strong backer of product liability and medical malpractice reform, and is a lead sponsor of the auto choice plan that would let car owners pay less for insurance by disclaiming pain and suffering damages. He has been the Senate sponsor of so-far unsuccessful measures to ban racial quotas and preferences. McConnell served on Foreign Relations until 1992, then switched to Appropriations and in 1994 became chairman of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee. He has strongly supported aid to Israel and has been skeptical about aid to Russia. He has faced questions about his and wife Elaine Chao's Chinese connections since she took over as Labor Secretary for the Bush Administration.
McConnell has spent much time on tobacco issues. In June 1998 he split with retiring Democrat Wendell Ford and backed an $18 billion tobacco program that would end price supports and provide mandatory buyouts of tobacco farmers. Ford and Jim Bunning, then a Republican congressman and candidate for the Senate, backed a $28 billion bailout with voluntary buyouts and continuing price supports. It was the first time in 60 years, Ford said, that Kentucky senators disagreed on tobacco. Later that month, the tobacco settlement bill died in the Senate, and McConnell, stung by criticism from tobacco farmers, reversed his previous desire to end price supports. In September he persuaded conferees to drop a provision that would have required tobacco companies to pay for tobacco price supports; they would take it out of the hide of farmers, he said. In August 1999 he got unanimous consent of a bill to overcome legal obstacles and get quicker payment of $112 million to tobacco farmers. In October 2000 he got burley tobacco growers released from repaying loans of $509 million and got disposal of 250 million pounds of surplus drought-damaged tobacco. McConnell has frequently used his seat on Appropriations to insert riders that help Kentucky. They include a transfer of mineral rights in eastern Kentucky from TVA, $1 million to study new coal technologies at a Capitol Hill power plant, $2 million to study impoundments that hold coal waste, $11 million for environmental cleanup and worker health testing at the Paducah uranium plant. He remained silent when his wife proposed transferring the Paducah program to the Justice Department, although Senator Jim Bunning and Representative Ed Whitfield objected.
McConnell's greatest expertise is on campaigns and elections. He has fought one battle after another against campaign finance bills that in his view limit free speech and vigorous electoral competition. ''Spending is speech,'' he says. ''The First Amendment denies government the power to determine that spending to promote one's political views is wasteful, excessive or unwise.'' He disputes the notions that campaign ads are some kind of pollution and that too much is spent on them. In 1994 he spoke all night to filibuster a campaign finance bill, "the only true all-night filibuster in the last 12 years," he said in 1999. In October 1999, with more than 40 senators on his side, he killed a version of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill. In 1999 Bill Clinton broke with tradition and refused to nominate Bradley Smith for FEC commissioner, the law professor picked by Senate Republicans, who opposed much campaign finance regulation as a violation of the First Amendment. McConnell got Clinton to nominate Smith by putting a hold on the nomination of Richard Holbrooke to be UN Ambassador. In March 2001, after Democrats picked up four seats in the 2000 election, John McCain insisted on bringing campaign finance forward again, and despite McConnell's efforts managed to pass his measure. But as McConnell pointed out, it did not include many provisions in previous McCain-Feingold bills, including public subsidies for candidates and voluntary spending limits. And the sweeping provisions against independent advertising inserted by an amendment by Paul Wellstone (which McConnell voted for) seemed likely to be ruled unconstitutional. McCain's bill was also amended by a doubling of the limit on individual contributions.
McConnell ran for chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and lost to Phil Gramm in 1990 and in 1992 by one vote; he won the post in November 1996. But he was not able to get Republican senators to contribute as much to campaigns as Democratic senators for 1998, and he was criticized for contributing heavily to Mark Neumann of Wisconsin, who ran against Russ Feingold, and for skimping on Washington state's Linda Smith, a McCain-Feingold backer. He responded that polls showed Neumann's chances were better, and indeed Neumann won a higher percentage, but both lost. So did enough Republican hopefuls that the party gained no seats. After the election, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska ran for the post, but McConnell won 39-13. In the 2000 cycle he had tougher sledding. The death of Paul Coverdell in July 2000 cost Republicans one crucial seat. The death of Missouri Democrat Mel Carnahan in a plane crash in October 2000 resulted in the candidacy of his widow and the narrow defeat of John Ashcroft, who might have won if the crash had not occcurred. Republicans lost most of the close races, and the result was a 50-50 split. But McConnell did not seem to be getting much blame. He relinquished the post in December 2000 since his seat is up in 2002.
McConnell has had more success in building up Kentucky's chronically ailing Republican Party. He oversaw Ron Lewis's capture of the 2d District House seat in a May 1994 special election. He helped Ed Whitfield pick up the 1st District and Republican legislative candidates win in western Kentucky in 1994. He backed Anne Northup in her win in Louisville's 3d District in 1996. In 1998 McConnell strongly backed Jim Bunning's candidacy for the Senate. But when Democrat Paul Patton was narrowly elected governor in November 1995, Democrats sensed McConnell might be in trouble. He had won a second term in 1990 over former Louisville Mayor Harvey Sloane 52%-48%. The 1996 Democratic nominee, former Lieutenant Governor Steve Beshear, attacked McConnell for stopping campaign finance reform, for seeking to delay voting on the minimum wage increase and for supporting NAFTA. McConnell charged that Beshear was a lobbyist, a political insider and, worst, a fox hunter; on the campaign trail Beshear was followed by a character dressed in fox-hunting regalia. McConnell put Beshear on the defensive when Bill Clinton proposed that the FDA regulate tobacco as a drug. McConnell spent $5 million to Beshear's $2 million and, after early polls showed a close race, won 55%-43%. He carried the Louisville and Lexington areas, won 2-1 in northern Kentucky, and lost only handfuls of counties in the eastern mountains and in the far western end of the state.
In the 2000 election, McConnell helped the Bush campaign target and carry Kentucky; he backed the successful merger of the Jefferson County and Louisville city governments. After the election, he and Bob Torricelli, the Democrats' 2000 Senate campaign committee chairman, proposed a bipartisan four-member commission to study elections and make recommendations to state and local governments, with $100 million in federal grants to states.
McConnell comes up for re-election in 2002. In February 2001 Lois Combs Weinberg, daughter of former (1959-63) Governor Bert Combs, announced she was running. Bert Combs was one of the leading Kentucky politicians of the 20th Century. Weinberg has served on education boards but never before sought elective office, but her announcement was attended by state House Majority Leader Greg Stumbo and former Governors Martha Layne Collins and Edward Breathitt; she seemed unlikely to have competition for the Democratic nomination, except perhaps from self-financing (and 1998 Senate candidate) Charlie Owen. Weinberg called McConnell "the poster boy of the privileged and the powerful" and promised to attack him for his opposition to campaign finance election. Of that issue, McConnell said in 2001, "I can still confidently state that there has never been an election in American history decided on this issue one way or another, either for or against a candidate." The 2002 election may be a test of that proposition.
Group Ratings
ADA ACLU AFS LCV CON ITIC NTU COC ACU NTLC CHC
2000 5 29 0 0 11 89 74 92 100 97 92
1999 0 -- 0 0 8 -- 75 88 84 -- --
National Journal Ratings
1999 LIB -- 1999 CONS 2000 LIB -- 2000 CONS
Economic 0% -- 83% 0% -- 86%
Social 23% -- 72% 22% -- 73%
Foreign 46% -- 52% 5% -- 86%
Key Votes of the 106th Congress
1. Educ. Savings Accts. Y
2. Prescrip. Drug Benefit N
3. Delay Ergonomic Standards Y
4. Phase Out Estate Tax Y
5. Review Movie Violence Y
6. Gun Show Bckgrnd. Checks N
7. Ban Part.-Birth Abortion Y
8. Broaden Hate Crimes List N
9. NATO War in Serbia Y
10. Table Cuba Travel Ban Y
11. Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty N
12. Perm. Trade with China Y
Yes, but it seems that is the average grade, even for the GOP
I suppose that is because that is about what nearly all the politicians have earned. Just more evidence that we need to throw all the suns-a-b!tches out.
Some test:
McConnell (R) 65%
Weinberg (D) 35%
My husband is a specialist in high-risk obstetrics. He deals with these kinds of cases all the time. If the pregnancy has to be ended in a hurry, he can do a c-section. If they can safely wait a day or so, he will induce labor (just like for a PBA) and deliver the baby - alive.
Molech still needs appeasing...
Thanks for posting that. I had been feeling as if I were the only one who could see what is really going on in America.
Frist was in favor of opening the in vitro fertilization clinic unused individual living embryos for destructive research. At the deepest level it's ghoulish. [The reason embryonic stem cell research is not about abortion hinges on the fact that the embryos will not be implanted in a woman's body, but dissected for embryonic body parts after being 'gestated' artificially to a cell differentiation stage desired.]
As far as I know, Frist is not in favor of abortion except for cases of imminent danger to the mother's life, rape and incest, and he doesn't favor abortion even in the rape and incest exceptions if the pregnancy is approximately half-way through the 40 weeks ... as far as I can discern from correspondence through his office.
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