Archives for September 2018

With the new allegations brought forth by Michael Avenatti, as well as the reporting that the President is taking over the public relations regarding his nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, including an announced 5 PM press conference/statement/availability, the real action will be within the Republican majority caucus in the Senate. Specifically all the attention needs to be on Senator McConnell.

The Senate majority leader is not particularly popular within his own caucus. He’s a top down, micromanager who tries to control everything. This includes the committees. The GOP committee chairs in the Senate are, in many ways, just figureheads. Right now every reporter is scrambling to get answers from Senator Grassley, who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, about what is going to happen. And while he or his office will eventually provide some, they aren’t really Grassley’s answers. They’re McConnell’s. Senator Grassley is just the face of the GOP majority on the committee, McConnell is really calling the shots.

Senator McConnell is almost the truest example of a natural fascist in American politics and public life today. His guiding principle that might makes right is the distilled essence of totalitarianism and was a hallmark of Mussollini’s fascism (national-syndicalism), as well as part of the bastardization of Nietzche’s philosophies adopted and used by the NAZIs. As I wrote back in June:

Senate Majority Leader McConnell isn’t a politician or like any politician who has ever served as Senate Majority or Minority Leader. Rather than view him as a politician, it is more appropriate to understand Senator McConnell as an insurgent, albeit a non-violent one. He recognizes no legitimacy but his own. When out of power he’ll do whatever is necessary using asymmetric, irregular, and/or unconventional means to achieve power. And once he achieves power he will do whatever he can to achieve his objectives to consolidate his gains as quickly as possible using any means necessary as he believes his actions are self justifying – that his achievement of power justifies his by any means necessary strategy. This is, by the way, the basic argument of the premier Italian fascist (national-syndicalist) theorist Sergio Panunzio, who delineated the fascist theories for the use of political violence and low intensity warfare in the 1920s. As a result, there is no law, rule, tradition, norm, ethic, promise, and/or deal he won’t violate or renege on. This also makes him an unreliable interlocutor and makes it impossible to negotiate with him in good faith as he doesn’t believe in good faith negotiations.

Senator McConnell doesn’t do anything in good faith. The last thing that Senator McConnell wants is to lose control of the Senate. Whether now because of the defections of a pair of his retiring members using it as leverage to achieve their own objectives or in the mid terms because enough voters want a check on the President to override the partisan Republican advantage in this senatorial election cycle. It is why he’s ground everything in the chamber other than handling nominations, specifically judicial nominations, to a halt. It is why he doesn’t want to do the legally required annual budgetary resolution so he can avoid having his members take tough votes before the midterms. And it is why he’s cancelled most of the August recess under the pretense that it is the only way he can move judicial nominees because of what he alleges is Democratic obstruction. Nominations that only exist because he prevented President Obama from seating almost any judicial nominees during his final two years in office. The Democratic minority has no tools to stop these nominations, regardless of what Senator McConnell says because Senator McConnell in conjunction with Senator Grassley has gotten rid of the blue slip rule and refuses to recognize Democratic senators holds on nominees. Senator McConnell’s cancellation of the August recess is really just a thinly veiled attempt to keep incumbent Democratic senators up for reelection off the campaign trail. Every Senate rule, tradition, norm, ethic, and even law (Congressional Budget Act) has been bent or stretched to breaking or just outright ignored by Senator McConnell in his quest to consolidate his power and achieve his revanchist and reactionary objectives. As an insurgent, albeit a non-violent one, Senator McConnell only understands and recognizes the application of leverage and force.

If you want to know how the Senate is going to respond to these recent allegations, or specifically how the Senate’s GOP majority is going to respond, watch Senator McConnell. He is the only Republican senator that matters.

Open thread.

What to Watch for in the US Senate Over the Next Several DaysPost + Comments (331)