March 17, 2021
Mitch McConnell's Grand Guignol performance in the Senate
By Andrea Widburg
The Grand Guignol was a theater in Paris in the first half of the 20th century that specialized in amoral horror entertainment. On Tuesday, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave his own version of the Grand Guignol when he rained fire and brimstone on the Senate, detailing the horrors Democrats would suffer if they were to do away with the 215-year-old filibuster. He knew that his speech was meaningless because he already gave the filibuster away in January. Once it's gone, Republicans will never again have the power to take revenge on the Democrats.
Back in January, I wrote about how Mitch McConnell pre-emptively gave away the filibuster. He agreed to Chuck Schumer's demand regarding Senate rules that, in the 50-50 Senate, there would be "power sharing" (hah!) in exchange for Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema promising not to ditch the filibuster, which has been part of the Senate rules of operation since 1806. While Sinema is something of a maverick and might be trustworthy, Joe Manchin, after pretending to stand strong, always sides with the Senate majority.
On Tuesday, McConnell was back again talking a big game on the filibuster. What triggered him was that Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) was caught on a hot mic telling transportation secretary Pete (he likes to play with toy trains) Buttigieg that Democrats were planning to pass an infrastructure bill and were going to do it without Republican votes. The presumption is that Cardin said this because he knew that the Democrats were going to move to end the filibuster — that is, he knew that Sinema and Manchin were reneging on their promise to McConnell.
As the New York Sun explains, McConnell got angry. In many ways, he delivered a stellar defense of the filibuster:
Mr. McConnell responded today with a prediction of the kind rarely heard in the upper chamber. "Let me say this very clearly, for all 99 of my colleagues," the Kentuckian rasped. "Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin — can even begin — to imagine what a completely scorched earth Senate would look like. None of us has even served one minute in a Senate that was completely drained of comity and consent."
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/mitch_mcconnells_grand_guignol_performance_in_the_senate.html
