Hopefully Democrats and Progressives will be smart enough not to fall for the small minded GOP tactics.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has settled in on his election-year strategy: Identify issues that unite his caucus but divide the other party, then use them to drive a wedge between the White House and congressional Democrats. At the top of his list: the administration’s handling of terrorism cases.
Replicating his pattern of relentless, blistering speeches against President Barack Obama’s health care proposal and his plan to shutter the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, McConnell has begun attacking Obama’s plan to try terrorism suspects in civilian courts — and he’s taking aim directly at Attorney General Eric Holder.
“The core question is whether the attorney general of the United States ought to be in charge of the war on terror,” McConnell said. “And the answer is no.”
McConnell hopes moderate Democrats will join Republicans in blocking funding for any civilian trials of terrorism suspects — a would-be GOP victory the party’s candidates could trumpet on the campaign trail throughout this election year.
The White House and its allies have pushed back hard against McConnell’s attacks, noting that the Bush administration took similar tacks with other terrorism suspects — and that neither McConnell nor his Republican colleagues offered much criticism at the time.
“Those policies and practices, which were not criticized when employed by previous administrations, have been and remain extremely effective in protecting national security,” Holder said in a letter to McConnell last week.
McConnell, 67 and in his fourth year as minority leader, is much more free to engage on the issues this year than he was in 2008, when he faced a tough reelection bid of his own. Having won a fifth term, he’s liberated to attack wherever he thinks it will do his party the most good — as he did last year, when he decided early on that the Democrats’ health care bill deserved “bipartisan defeat.”
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said McConnell’s political instincts “are pretty close to flawless.”
Democrats blame McConnell for bottling up Senate business by throwing up an unprecedented number of procedural hurdles to stall action. Still, New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, head of the Senate Democratic campaign efforts, says that McConnell lacks the national name recognition needed to make him the foil for Democrats’ 2010 campaign.
“I think there’s a real price to be paid for being obstructionists, and at the end of the day, it’s our challenge to make sure people know the difference and what that means in their lives,” Menendez said.
Under McConnell, Menendez added, the Republicans are “pretty disciplined in just following whatever message they choose to adopt. However, some of the members of his caucus he just can’t control. And they take him far afield from even where he wants to go.” CONTINUED
Mitch McConnell’s 2010 strategy: Divide and conquer – Manu Raju – POLITICO.com