“Whatever enjoyment McConnell got out of being elected leader today, enjoy it. Because from this point forward, power is going to be leaving his hands.”
This what you have in mind?
Posted on 11/17/2014 7:36:33 AM PST by SoConPubbie
Congratulations, Mitch McConnell! You now have the hardest job in Washington.
That dubious distinction used to belong to belong to House Speaker John Boehner, who has struggled since 2011 to manage a GOP majority so unwieldy he called it everything from “frogs in a wheelbarrow” to the “knucklehead” caucus.
But as the incoming Senate majority leader, it will now fall to McConnell to receive legislation from the House, shepherd it past his 53-member majority, and deliver completed bills to the president, all while keeping the government open for business.
McConnell’s difficult job will be made enormously more complicated by the makeup of his incoming three-seat majority. It includes at least three senators eyeing a run for president (Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul), and 11 new Republican members, three of whom have been pegged by grassroots activists as the conservative cavalry riding in as reinforcements for the Cruz wing of the party.
Those senators—Joni Ernst of Iowa, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and Ben Sasse from Nebraska—were all breakout stars for activists in the 2014 cycle. They raked in millions of dollars from outside groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund, and are the three that conservatives like Steve Deace, the nationally syndicated conservative radio host from Iowa, say they expect the most from.
“What I heard from conservatives I talked to around the country during the election was ‘Who is going to go there and help out Cruz and [Sen. Mike] Lee? Who is going to help out the wacko birds?’” said Deace, referring to the derisive term Sen. John McCain once used to describe Cruz that conservatives now wear as a badge of honor. “Our expectation is that [Ernst, Cotton and Sasse] are going to join the ranks of the wacko birds. That’s our expectation.”
Deace and his listeners won’t be the only ones looking to the trio to for results. So will conservative donors. The Senate Conservatives Fund and its affiliate Senate Conservatives Action, for example, plowed millions into the Iowa, Nebraska and Arkansas races. Ernst received nearly $450,000 in bundled contributions and $475,000 in independent expenditures from the groups for her race. Sasse got $487,000 in bundled contributions and more than $835,000 in outside expenditures in his GOP primary. Cotton picked up about $200,000 in bundled SCF money and saw more than $500,000 in outside SCF money in his race against Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor.
Another major conservative group, Club for Growth Action, poured more than $800,000 into Cotton’s race against Pryor, about $500,000 against Sasse’s primary opponents, and another $297,151 and $186,587 in bundled donations for Cotton and Sasse, respectively.
The first place conservatives will look to the new freshmen to make their voices heard is on immigration, which Ernst and SCF both call “executive amnesty.” The president has indicated he’ll soon take sweeping unilateral action, a move McConnell said won’t draw him into a government shutdown fight when he takes over the majority.
“There won’t be a government shutdown,” McConnell pledged Thursday, a commitment that left conservatives livid.
“Whatever enjoyment McConnell got out of being elected leader today, enjoy it. Because from this point forward, power is going to be leaving his hands.”
“Mitch McConnell is making promises he can’t keep,” Deace said. “Whatever enjoyment McConnell got out of being elected leader, enjoy it. Because from this point forward, power is going to be leaving his hands.”
Jim Manley, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, predicted that McConnell and the Republicans will safely navigate the lame-duck session, but once the new senators are sworn in, “All bets are off.”
“Sen. McConnell has got a whole bunch of people in his caucus, including those up in 2016, who realize the current strategy [of obstruction] is not going to work, and they need to put some legislative points on the scoreboard,” Manley said. “But whether that’s going to play out remains to be seen, in part because there are three Republicans running for president, none of whom care much about the Senate as an institution nor about their other colleagues’ views, quite frankly. And there are a handful of incoming senators who are very, very conservative.”
But Ron Bonjean, who was a senior staffer to Sen. Trent Lott when he was majority leader, said McConnell not only will have to consider the instincts of conservatives during those votes, but also the needs of several Republicans like Pat Toomey, who is up for reelection in 2016 the blue state of Pennsylvania.
“I do think McConnell knows how to manage his caucus,” Bonjean said. “While there will definitely be turbulence because he has more members to deal with, there are also some other dynamics at play for some of these members.”
Bonjean predicted that like Boehner, McConnell will need to have a majority of his majority on board to get a bill to the floor, but also will have to make the bills bipartisan enough to avoid a Democratic filibuster.
“Here’s the problem: Even if McConnell has all 53 Republicans, he’s got to get to 60 votes,” Bonjean said. “That’s very difficult to do, so they’re going to have to go for bipartisan victories to begin with, low-hanging fruit that can move through the Senate to show that they can get the work done.”
But low-hanging, bipartisan bills are exactly what Cruz and the grassroots conservatives backing Ernst, Sasse, and Cotton say they don’t want, especially in the face of an Obama executive order.
“I took an hour of calls yesterday asking what Congress should do if the president acts alone on immigration,” Deace said. “Every call, all over the country, men and women, all said the same thing: Impeach him.”
What you said exactly!
I think we will see the GOP Leadership act in concert with the MarxoFascists and do everything it can to neuter Cruz, Lee and the ‘Wacko-Bird’ wing of their party.
Every statement the leadership has made since the election would indicate that this is indeed going to be the policy.
How many Republicans will tow the Establishment line or break ranks to resist - remains to be seen.
I’m not too hopeful, especially since McConnell and Boehner were both ‘re-elected’ (nominated) UNANIMOUSLY via voice vote in their caucuses, including Cruz and Lee lending their voice to McConnell leading the party.
God bless those wacko-birds. I’m a wacko-bird too! We might as well embrace it.
You don't know that.
That's what McConnell's staffers said, and they lie.
If it was by acclamation, you don't know who voted for him or even who was there.
It makes sense to me that Cruz will throw some things to McConnel in the hopes of helping establishment Republicans change the losing game they play.
For Liberals/Leftists, government is god. To be for small government is to be against god. Thus the absolute hatred and obsession against the blasphemers by the believers. Kill the kuffar isn't limited to Muslims.
Why not let’s see if Mitch and company are going to do what’s best for all of us. I can’t believe that we can’t all come together. Cruz or whomever in the end must be a uniter.
Even if we need a simple majority, how are we to deal with McCain, Graham, Collins, Alexander, McConnell, Cochran, Murkowski? They can reliably be counted on to “cross the aisle” so how do we even get to 51?
This what you have in mind?
You better get another dose of that Krell Brain Booster machine if you think the Conservatives are the embarrassment in our party.
That will be a "lie" even the alternative media will end up having to swallow then.
Roll Call, PJ Media, NBC and every other "news" source say the following:
Senate Republicans have unanimously elected Mitch McConnell to be majority leader.
"There was no drama heading into the vote, as no one challenged the Kentucky Republican for leadership after the party’s triumph in last week’s midterm elections.
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) voted for McConnell, and the new majority leader got a standing ovation inside the caucus room.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire nominated McConnell, according to a GOP source inside the room, and Sen.-elect Tom Cotton of Arkansas gave a seconding speech. He won a voice vote without opposition and was treated to a standing ovation.
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas was likewise selected, by voice vote without contention, as the party’s whip. He was nominated by Sen. Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania and seconded by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine."
Until and unless Cruz and Lee say they voted for McConnell (on a voice vote) I won't believe it.
The media and politicians lie. Most people know that, unless they are vested in a particular outcome.
/johnny
McConnell has used up all his chances. Everyone knows that he's a liberal with a record of supporting the liberal agenda with his cloture votes.
/johnny
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We will see come January - but a lot of media, including the alternative media are going to eat big time crow if that turned out to be nothing but a "lie".
Of course we know McConnell and the GOP leadership are congenital liars same as the Democrats.
Voice votes and elections by acclimation are BS.
/johnny
I suspect they with expertly play “Good cop, Bad cop” quite well.
Like him or not, Mitch did not continually get re-elected by being stupid at politics.
If in fact it is necessary to impeach the president, it is also necessary to begin home-state Recall action against senators who do not vote for conviction.
Not that I would expect there to be all that many Democrats who are afraid of a Recall - but there easily could be some who got reelected on Romney’s negative coattails.
The senate was never intended to be a popularly elected federal post. In the Constitution, the role of the Senate was to provide a senior deliberative body to counteract the people's House. Senators were to be elected by the legislatures of the sovereign states. Once selected, their paramount concern was to be the welfare of that state and its citizens, not to become mystical pundits on Meet The Press topics.
One benefit would of course be that since 30 states are Republican dominated, the senior deliberative body might be much more conservative than it now is. The welfare populations of the large cities already have their advocates in the House. It is patently unfair to allow these Third World enclaves of fundamentally unproductive and now un-American urbanites to dominate the Senatorial selection of otherwise conservative states.
Another benefit might be the ability of a state legislature to "fire" a Senator who is not performing his primary function of preventing harm to his state and its citizens. A vote in the state house would certainly be faster than a recall campaign!
Where is Cruz, I wonder, on the need for a Constitutional adjustment, sending the 17th the way of the 19th!?
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