While Mitch McConnell was excoriating Democrats for telling then President Bush that he needed to start withdrawing from Iraq, he was busy begging President Bush to withdraw troops from Iraq simply for political expediency. The hypocrisy of this stance is not surprising as hypocrisy is typical with most politicians whether they are Democrats or Republicans.
What is disconcerting is the type of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy on policy that does not have an immediate life and death impact can be forgiven. Hypocrisy that kills is immoral if not criminal. The Republican Party sometimes out of necessity because of policies that simply are anti common man, anti middleclass, and anti humane unfortunately makes this their mode of operation.
These policies materially affect us all. It is sad that the main stream media do not actively bring these policy inconsistencies, hypocrisies, and inhumaneness into the public light. We need a media that does its job. We need a media that is the disinfectant of politicians.
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Editorial | McConnell’s true colors
George W. Bush got a lot wrong in his administration, but he certainly did figure out Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell. In his new memoir, Decision Points, the former president tells of a meeting he held in September 2006 with Mr. McConnell, then the Republican whip in the Senate. The occupation of Iraq was going horribly, American and Iraqi casualties were rising sharply, costs had mushroomed into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and Iraq was teetering on the brink of full-scale sectarian civil war. Mr. McConnell was concerned, and he gave the president his advice.
But why was he concerned? It wasn’t because of bloodshed, destruction, a hemorrhaging budget or a slide toward disaster. He was fearful that the morass in Iraq would cause the Republican Party to take a beating in the approaching mid-term elections. And what was his advice? He urged the president to “bring some troops home from Iraq” to lessen the political risks, Mr. Bush writes.
This incident, which Sen. McConnell’s office has not denied, shines brightly on the contemptible hypocrisy and obsessive partisanship that have come to mark the senator’s time in office.
At the time that Sen. McConnell was privately advising Mr. Bush to reduce troop levels in Iraq, he was elsewhere excoriating congressional Democrats who had urged the same thing. “The Democrat[ic] leadership finally agrees on something — unfortunately it’s retreat,” Sen. McConnell had said in a statement on Sept. 5, 2006, about a Democratic letter to Mr. Bush appealing for cuts in troop levels. Sen. McConnell, who publicly was a stout defender of the war and Mr. Bush’s conduct of the conflict, accused the Democrats of advocating a position that would endanger Americans and leave Iraqis at the mercy of al-Qaida.
Unless he is prepared to call a former president of his own party a liar, Mr. McConnell has a choice. He can admit that he did not actually believe the Iraq mission was vital to American security, regardless of what he said at the time. Or he can explain why the fortunes of the Republican Party are of greater importance than the safety of the United States.
Mr. Bush did not take Sen. McConnell’s advice. Indeed, after the election he increased American troop strength in the so-called “surge.” The former president presumably recounts the 2006 meeting to show that he placed a higher priority on success in Iraq than on political victory.
As usual, Sen. McConnell’s political instincts were right. The Republicans did lose control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats in the November 2006 election. In Louisville, the war’s unpopularity helped John Yarmuth unseat five-term Republican Rep. Anne Northup in the 3rd Congressional District.
But the public has a right to expect its leaders to pursue loftier goals than partisan success. When voters hear Sen. McConnell these days — at a time of continuing economic hardship — say that Republicans’ top priority must be to limit President Obama to a single term, they should ask themselves: Why does he place greater value on that purely political goal than on American citizens’ well-being?
Editorial | McConnell’s true colors | courier-journal.com | The Courier-Journal