McConnell Gives His Side of the Story

It seems only fair to post Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s response to the foofaraw started by the quote I posted about below. McConnell tells my friends over at Truth Revolt that he is not attacking the Tea Party at all. Rather he feels that the Senate Conservatives Fund is a fake, pretending to support conservatism while undermining it. Here’s the quote:

I’ve always been and continue to be a big supporter of the Tea Party and the conservative change it’s bringing to Washington. One of the biggest obstacles to that change, however, is the Senate Conservatives Fund, a rogue political operation that has co-opted the Liberty movement for its own enrichment to the detriment of the conservative cause. This is a point that I have been making repeatedly and energetically over the past several months, because in my view this group has deceived a lot of good people. They claim to share our goals but undermine them at every turn. I think they should be stopped, and I don’t mind saying so.

This needs to be taken seriously because A) Ann Coulter suggested as much in the talk with Sean Hannity I posted about earlier and B) it’s plausible someone would do that for any number of reasons.

The original New York Times story in which McConnell said he was going to crush the opposition made it seem the senator was making a “move to stamp out challenges from the right,” as the headline said. But McConnell’s argument is instead that these challenges are fakes. That doesn’t necessarily mean the primary candidate himself is fake, but it could mean he’s been put in play for reasons of pure profit or even to aid the Democrats. As I mentioned, McConnell has a fight on his hands in the main election.

There are things that McConnell has done that I disagree with strongly, but he is definitely NOT a RINO — that’s just unfair. The American Conservative Union routinely ranks him near the top but, if that’s too swishy for you, the Heritage Action for America scorecard gives him an 80 percent, which may not be Ivory Conservative Soap, but it’s pretty good, especially from HAA. I mean, again as I said in my first post, no one should be primarying the guy. If you’re really going to be messing with Republicans at this crisis moment, primary someone in the John McCain (43%) range. Better yet, save your fire for the party that single-handedly brought you ObamaCare.

Anyway, McConnell should’ve been clearer in his original statement, but perhaps I should blame the way the Times played it. In any case, we really do have to try not to be stupid. There are two halves to the circle in a circular firing squad. One half is made of politicians without principle, the other is made of voters without good sense. Leftists claim their good intentions justify their crappy results. Republican voters don’t have that luxury.