@1:05 - "There is a good deal of conservative support for what I laid out yesterday beginning with the Wall Street Journal editorial page today."
@1:44 - "Doing the right thing for the country is our first obligation, but we cannot force a result, we need to do the next best thing and that's clarify the differences between the two parties."
@2:14 - "They want to blame the economy on us and the reason default is no better an idea today than it was when Newt Gingrich tried it in 1995, is it destroys your brand, and it gives the president an opportunity to blame Republicans for a bad economy."
@3:03 - Laura: "While it puts the burden, it shifts the burden to the greatest extent to Obama, in effect there is kind of a vote at the beginning to raise the debt ceiling because you are ceding..." McConnell: "No, no. It only authorizes the president to ask for it. There will be no vote to raise the debt ceiling I suspect by any Republican."
Laura: "Isn't that passing the buck, Senator? Isn't that passing the buck of leadership to the White House?"
McConnell: "We've been trying to get this liberal president to sign a deal worth signing. You know it makes a difference when you only control a third of the government. If we were able to run the government out of the House of Representatives we would be able to get a result that we would like."
@4:40 - Laura: "When I see the New York Times on the other hand, praising the deal, Harry Reid seeming to be open to it, and even the White House murmers that it might be something acceptable I get a little nervous, why do you think they are embracing it?"
McConnell: "Because they want to raise the debt ceiling and of course we know that is going to happen. Just like we knew shutting down the government in 1995 was not going to work for us, it helped Bill Clinton get reelected. I refuse to help Barack Obama get reelected."
@5:34 - "If we go into default he [Obama] will say that Republicans are making the economy worse and try to convince the public, maybe with some merit, if people start not getting their Social Security checks, military families start not getting letters saying that service people overseas don't get paid, you know that's an argument he would have a good chance of winning and all of a sudden we are co-ownership, we have co-ownership of a bad economy. That is very bad positioning going into election."
@8:34 - "We had hoped this would present an opportunity to cut spending. It looks as if, it may change, but it looks as if it is only going to be an opportunity for him to try to entice us top raising taxes and as I said when I started I'm not going to be a part of turning the Republicans into tax collectors for the welfare state."
“Doing the right thing for the country is our first obligation, but we cannot force a result, we need to do the next best thing and that’s clarify the differences between the two parties.”
Translated: they want to win the PR game, purely and simply. McConnell’s Plan B works if and only if Obama gets blamed for subsequent failures. Which will result in Republicans winning future elections, which they will use to play all new games.
“If we go into default he [Obama] will say that Republicans are making the economy worse and try to convince the public, maybe with some merit, if people start not getting their Social Security checks, military families start not getting letters saying that service people overseas don’t get paid, you know that’s an argument he would have a good chance of winning and all of a sudden we are co-ownership, we have co-ownership of a bad economy. That is very bad positioning going into election.”
So there you go.
McConnell believes that if Obama blames Republicans he will be doing it “maybe with some merit”.
This is clearly incorrect. If Obama chooses to withhold social security checks, he will have prioritized in that way, and blaming Republicans will not be an argument with merit.
Only if Republicans fail to make the case why this is the fault of Democrats who would not agree to cuts will the public not see that this argument has no merit.
Clearly McConnell has already decided that he is unwilling or unable to make the argument that this thing is the fault of Democrats, so he is either incompetent or afraid, both of which are unacceptable in a leader of the Senate.