Mitch-Slapping the Democrats
LUCAS, FRED
Mitch-Slapping the Democrats Leading the opposition comes naturally to McConnell. by Fred Lucas service official who—it has just been announced—will be sent for a month-long crash course in...
...When he was released, he could walk, but doctors feared that putting pressure on the left leg would cause abnormal growth, so they instructed his mother to keep him off his feet until he was four, while she administered physical therapy three times a day...
...Small wonder that after Ivanov and the Russian president made consecutive trips to India earlier this year, a New Delhi columnist wrote that Putin is an acronym that stands for "Planes, Uranium, Tanks, Infrastructure and Nuclear power...
...I laid my prestige on the line and lost," says McConnell, sitting cross-legged under a chandelier in the Republican leadership office, shortly after debating a spending bill on the Senate floor...
...ad featuring a pack of bloodhounds hunting for the incumbent, known for missing votes...
...If they do, the problems will be two years worse, and they will have the same amount of Republican cooperation as we did Democratic cooperation...
...Republican caucus meetings are much briefer under McConnell than they were under Bill Frist and Trent Lott, Bennett said, as McConnell tends to cut to the heart of a matter...
...Moscow wants Tehran as its next major weapons customer...
...Immigration will be easier, he said...
...Critics also lampoon McConnell for having his name on no major piece of legislation, though they ignore his co-authorship with Chris Dodd of the Help America Vote Act...
...As for the charge about negative campaigns, McConnell's attack ads may be no nastier than average, just more effective because they're funny...
...The lesson was learned: "You can't lead if you don't have any followers...
...He thinks four or five or six moves ahead and takes that first step to set up the sixth move...
...Whether voters or other senators, the new minority leader has succeeded in amassing followers—and a lot of political cash, reportedly some $220 million over his Senate career...
...She must have watched me like a hawk—all day, every day," McCon-nell reflects...
...The next year, he invited a Democratic state senator to his living room and persuaded him to switch parties, thus shifting the majority in one house of the legislature...
...There have been a lot of things written about how formative the first five years in life are...
...McConnell's] not cut out for the movies...
...Tellingly, it was the proposed ban on all arms exports to Iran...
...But Kentucky was still a Democratic state: The governor, both houses of the legislature, five of seven U.S...
...He brought the party together from its factions and splits by using leverage from his fundraising...
...After interning for his hero, Kentucky senator John Sherman Cooper—an experience that crystallized his own ambition to serve in the Senate—and serving in the Ford Justice Department, McConnell went home and got himself elected Jefferson County judge-executive...
...Today Chavez, tomorrow Ahma-dinejad...
...A lefty antiwar group, Americans United for Change, announced spending $200,000 for ads starting in late March attacking McConnell's support for Bush and the war...
...McConnell had to be clever...
...The perfect time to tackle these two big issues in the country is right now...
...Gordon Smith of Oregon—a moderate who's been on the opposite side of an issue from McConnell, having joined Chuck Hagel in siding with Democrats on a timeline for leaving Iraq—attests the leader is a good whip on almost every occasion...
...House members, and the senior senator were all Democrats and had been for over two decades...
...He single-handedly built the contemporary Republican party" in Kentucky, says Donald Gross, a political science professor at the University of Kentucky, who notes he disagrees with the senator on virtually everything...
...He blocked the McCain-Feingold bill for nearly a decade before it was finally enacted...
...Keeping arms plants pumping out weapons for export to China, India, and Venezuela is now the Russian government's top priority—more important even than the smooth functioning of the Ministry of Defense...
...servative Bob Bennett...
...Together these have been key to his success, both in building up the Republican party in Kentucky, and now in holding the Republican caucus together when it counts—as when the Republicans stopped a vote on a Democratic antiwar resolution in February...
...His earliest memory is of his last visit there...
...A masterful strategist, McConnell doesn't rely on charisma or good looks...
...But McCon-nell has said he's just as happy to block bad legislation as to sponsor good—as befits a conservative lawmaker and, now, minority leader...
...To get Moscow to sign on to the recent Security Council resolution clamping new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, the Russian contingent demanded one item be deleted from the sanctions list...
...He won his seat by landslides in 1996 and 2002...
...William Natcher, beloved elder statesman and a Democrat, died, that McCon-nell showed what he could do...
...He speaks in a subdued voice and his handshake isn't the firmest...
...McConnell was the only Republican in the country that year to beat an incumbent Democratic senator (by a hair), in part because Ronald Reagan carried Kentucky by 21 points...
...I'll tell you why they ought to do it: Two years from now they hope they have the White House, and they hope they still have the Senate and the House...
...Supreme Court is now ready to take another look at campaign rules in a Wisconsin case, and McConnell expects to take a leading role in the matter...
...Mitch McConnell's will to win, developed at an early age, fell short when as president of the Student Bar Association at the University of Kentucky law school he failed in his effort to institute a student honor code...
...It was in 1994, when Rep...
...This was the impetus for an ad that showed Democratic candidate Joe Prather's face morphing into Clinton's face...
...Now, though, Democrats are hoping the national mood could make McConnell vulnerable...
...Though he lost the lawsuit to overturn the law in 2003, the U.S...
...This may eventually provoke a reaction from Washington...
...His opponent, an unknown Christian book store owner named Ron Lewis, pulled off what was called a miracle in the predominantly Democratic but socially conservative district...
...He understands that each state is different and the needs of the folks there are different, and at the end of the day he gets the numbers to win," said Smith, who nominated McCon-nell for the leadership role...
...He served in the post from 1978 through 1984, when he entered a long-shot contest against popular Democratic senator Dee Huddleston...
...It's an example of a leader getting out in front of his constituents too far and not bringing them along...
...Putin's comrades in arms are determined to keep the money flowing in—regardless of what it means for the rest of us...
...Incidentally, despite their disagreement on this issue, he describes his relationship with Arizona senator John McCain as "excellent...
...I've always felt that experience probably had a big impact on my feeling, which is that only those people in life are defeated who give up...
...Many Kentucky Democrats view McConnell as an old style machine pol driven by money and special interests and responsible for the worst attack ads, both in his own campaigns and in those he controls like a puppet master...
...The KGB-St...
...Perhaps his crowning achievement as a kingmaker came in 2003 when his hand-picked candidate, congressman Ernie Fletcher, became the first Republican to win a Kentucky governor's race since 1967...
...Why in the world would the Democrats do it...
...by Fred Lucas service official who—it has just been announced—will be sent for a month-long crash course in national security at the Russian armed forces General Staff Academy...
...he asked of Social Security reform...
...McConnell went on to help get Jim Bunning elected to the U.S...
...But Social Security reform— which almost no Democrats supported in 2005—could be a tough sell...
...Nor does he cultivate the tough guy image of a Lyndon Johnson or Tom DeLay...
...He's long headed," said Utah conFred Lucas is a reporter for Cybercast News Service...
...In his nomination speech, Smith talked about McConnell's drive to overcome obstacles going back to a childhood battle with polio...
...Two unknowns were battling in a special election, and McConnell was determined to make the race a referendum on President Clinton...
...He has high hopes that the Democratic majority will be receptive...
...national security...
...But McConnell is proud to be a money man, once called the "Darth Vader" of campaign finance reform...
...It is also what drives the movement to make Putin president for life or to ensure that he can hand-pick his successor...
...Senate in 1998...
...As leader, McConnell said his top priorities would be Social Security reform and comprehensive immigration reform...
...McConnell would eventually become student body president at the University of Louisville, then student bar president at the University of Kentucky law school—ending up nicely positioned to curry favor with both Cardinal and Wildcat fans in his sports heavy state...
...All of this is a sign that what really matters to the comrades in arms around Putin is to keep the multi-billion-dollar weapons-export deals humming...
...McConnell compensates for his lack of charisma with wit, usually delivering the best lines at Kentucky's annual Fancy Farm picnic, a raucous political event filled with fiery speeches, heckling crowds, and assorted gimmicks...
...He released the famous "Where's Dee...
...The pile of Russian weapons sent to Hugo Chavez—$3 billion of Suk-hoi Su-30MK2 or Su-35 fighter aircraft, Mil Mi-35 attack helicopters, Mil Mi-17 and Mi-26 helicopters, Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles, and other goodies—should be of at least minor interest to anyone concerned with U.S...
...McConnell intends to bring people along by appealing to their political self-interest...
...Some issues just lend themselves to being handled by divided government," he said, citing President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O'Neill's rescue of Social Security, and President Clinton and the Republican Congress's welfare reform in the 1990s...
...A charismatic leader is like someone in the movies who bursts on to the scene and in the next reel he's in charge...
...He argued, more articulately than anyone, that in politics money is speech...
...And then there's Iran...
...The 1984 hounds were memorable, as was a 1996 ad that showed a flock of sheep, with the warning "Don't be Be-sheared," a reference to his Democratic opponent Steve Beshear's support for tax increases...
...It was a major defeat in his early political life...
...He gains coordination and cooperation by using money to buy things...
...Republican colleagues describe him as a good listener and consensus builder, both in the role of Senate majority whip from 2003 to 2007 and now as minority leader...
...Petersburg social club that now has a monopoly on power in Moscow (and effectively silences those who oppose them) wants to expand the sale of Russian arms to anyone and everyone who wants them...
...At the age of two, he was treated at the clinic in Warm Springs, Georgia, founded by Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...At the time, it was the highest political office in Louisville, the only truly liberal part of Kentucky...
Vol. 12 • April 2007 • No. 30
