Addison Mitchell McConnell was born in Alabama, but he’s lived in Kentucky most of his life. He’s a Southerner, but he’s no good ol’ boy.
Mitch, a Kentucky US Senator since 1985, is notorious as an osbstrucitonist, who, in his capacity as the GOP Leader in the Senate, prided himself on resisting every legislative proposal put forward by President Obama — to say nothing of his insistence on reversing the course of SCOTUS rulings by packing the federal judiciary with right-wing Justices.
His use of the filibuster and his ability to change Senate rules to get his way have marked him as one of the least reasonalbe senators ever to serve.
Berkley poliical scientist Paul Pierson has described McConnell as the major figure (along with Newt Gingjrich of Georgia) in transforming the Republican Party into a “party geared increasingly not to governing but to making governance impossobble."
Mitch was elected to the Senate in 1984 when actor and goodlooking, smooth-talking Ronnie Reagan ran for re-election. That year, Reagon got 60% of the Blue Grass State’s votes, but Mitch won over Democrat Walter (“Dee”) Huddleston by only 5,1000 votes.
Mitch still is not popular in Kentucky.
Several years ago McConnell infamously pranced around on a stage waving a rifle to show his support for the National Rifle Association, the most powerful lobbying organization in Washington.
After numerous mass shootings last week (El Paso and Dayton), fueled by Donald Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, McConnell went to his Old Kentucky Home during the Senate's August recess. And Mitch absolutely refuses to call his GOP-dominated Senate back into session to deal with the epidemic of mass shootings.
Today, Trump called McConnell, who is only a few days younger than your solitary reporter. Trump told reporters outside his helicopter-filled White House lawn that McConnell said he’d been waiting for Trump’s call.
McConnell now says he will allow votes on meaningful gun reform (such as background checks and — maybe maybe — red flag laws allowing judges to take assault weapons away from dangerou people, when the Senate returns in September.
A majority of American voters favors meaningful background checks, but that won’t stop the strife-torn NRA from working with RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel to primary any Republican legislator who crosses the NRA and Trump. See https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/08/trump-republicans-guns-145333.
Trump has been encouraged to do for gun safety what Richard Nixon, an infamous red-baiter, did by going to China in 1972 and meeting with Foreign Minister Zhou En-lai and Chairman Mao Zedong.
Nixon dubbed his visit as “the week that changed the world,” a descriptor that continues to echo in the political lexicon. Nixon, no dummy, sought to drive a wedge between Communist China and Soviet Russia; and it worked pretty well, as China emerged from Red Guard rule into totalitarian mercantilism with a few hints of capitalism.
But associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith, who covers Congress for us on behalf of DNC Chair Tom Perez, said that when push comes to shove, McConnell, the Senator from Coal, will retire to his Majority Leader’s chambers, sip bourbon, and tell Trump to do whatever the NRA wants.