Really Bad Moves from McConnell

It's time for me to admit that I was wrong. In the past I've thought of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as uninterested in any particular policy issue, but pretty good at being strategic when it comes to the power games that often drive our politics. It's on that latter part that I've obviously been wrong.

Case in point: How he's handling the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be our next Attorney General.

You might have read by now that he slipped an anti-abortion poison pill into the Senate bill on human trafficking - which Democrats won't support. His position is that he will not hold a vote on the Lynch nomination until that bill is passed. In other words, his new hostage is confirmation of our next Attorney General.

Allow me to ditto what my friend Allan Bauer tweeted yesterday.

Dear Senate @GOP, the worst outcome of your current hostage crisis is that Eric Holder remains Attorney General, and we can live with that.
— Allan Brauer (@allanbrauer) March 16, 2015

Not the brightest move, McConnell.

But then, apparently yesterday he demonstrated his complete hackery on all this by blaming the Democrats for not voting on Lynch during the lame duck session last year. Ummm...Mr. McConnell, that wasn't that long ago and some of us remember (or can google) what you said back then.

“Ms. Lynch will receive fair consideration by the Senate. And her nomination should be considered in the new Congress through regular order,” McConnell said in a statement.

Senate Republicans are unified against Lynch’s nomination moving through the lame-duck session...

Finally, Majority Leader McConnell seems to be out on a limb with his insistence that an anti-abortion provision be included in the human trafficking bill without the support of Republicans in the House.

The House versions, carried by U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen, R-Minnesota, did not include the abortion language.

Paulsen, who is back in Minnesota during a House recess, called the Senate stalemate disappointing Thursday.

Paulsen supports restricting federal funds for abortions and the morning-after pill, but said that language has no place in the Senate bill.

“There is no reason it should be included in these bills. This issue is far too important to tie it up with an unrelated fight with politics as usual,” he said. “To me, this is about saving lives.”

Over the last four years, a lot of ink has been devoted to wondering whether or not John Boehner is the worst Speaker in history. Who knew McConnell wanted to get in on that action?