As a kid, I watched hundreds of Boston Celtics games with my dad. For my entire childhood and thereafter, late Celtic legend Tommy Heinsohn was Boston’s color commentator. Tommy, to put it politely, was the pugnacious type. With his wicked Boston accent, he was known for going berserk on referees from the broadcast booth whenever he felt like they’d slighted his beloved Celtics on the court. Heinsohn, who passed away in November, is one the few truly immortal sports figures in Boston history.
About 20 years ago, during a heated game against the Phoenix Suns, Tommy had a field day with referee Kenny Mauer, and he made a comment that stuck with me for all this time.
“You know, this Kenny Mauer should go home to his wife, because nobody here loves him,” he yelled into his mic as the crowd in Boston booed the latest in a string of bad calls.
Mitch McConnell, having lost the Senate majority and the trust of most Republican voters, could benefit from Tommy Heinsohn’s advice to Kenny Mauer.
Sure, “Cocaine Mitch” has had his moments, like when he blocked Merrick Garland from being confirmed to a seat on the Supreme Court during the 2016 presidential election, and then turned around four years later and rammed Amy Coney Barrett through under similar circumstances. That throbbing one-finger salute to the Left served as a symbolic gesture that, for once, the GOP was willing to break its own unwritten rules and win impolitely, instead of losing gracefully.
But this is politics in the era of Donald Trump. The Barrett confirmation might as well have been decades ago, and the question “what have you done for me lately” is catching up to the Turtle.
McConnell could have stuck with the Barrett confirmation mentality of playing like you mean to win. The voters loved it. They were begging for more, but unfortunately, one win was just too much winning for ’ole Mitch, and he returned to his ham-handed routine of bungling major opportunities at every turn.
Conceding to Joe Biden on the floor of the Senate didn’t exactly galvanize Republican voters to get out and vote for Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in Georgia. Why would it? Telling the more than 70 percent of Republican voters who think the election was stolen to go hang isn’t quite the morale boost they were looking for. Conceding a fraudulent election to the old man who stole it also defeats the purpose of voting again.
Then there was the whole easily avoided $2,000 stimulus check debacle.
Now, I’m not Donna Brazile, so Fox News doesn’t have me under contract to talk Republican strategy. But if they did, in a situation where Mitch McConnell legally could have bribed the entire Republican electorate just before a runoff election that would decide his fate as majority leader, I would’ve advised him to give it a shot. It was a plan so simple it just might have worked!
McConnell didn’t do himself any favors in the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency, either.
With the House, Senate, and presidency locked down, Republicans could have built a wall so tall we could see it from space. Obamacare, which Mitch pretended to oppose when it was raised in Congress? That should have been gone on January 21, 2017. Defunding Planned Parenthood, deporting illegal aliens, outlawing sanctuary cities, reigning in Big Tech, throwing corrupt politicians and oligarchs and spying FBI agents in jail—all of it should have been done, and done ruthlessly.
Day after day, Mitch should have been the ringleader of the most epic liberal beatdown in modern history. Every day should have been like the day Amy Coney Barrett had her confirmation vote. Not only should Mitch have been owning the libs, he should have been buying them wholesale.
At the very least, he could have pretended to care about President Trump’s agenda, which, in case he didn’t notice, was quite popular among his constituents.
And make no mistake, he did notice. He rode Trump’s coattails to reelection, after all.
So, let’s drop the pretense that Mitch McConnell is stupid or clueless, and understand that he is a political operator who actively worked against his constituents’ wishes.
McConnell spent four years toeing the America First line just enough to avoid publicly drawing the ire of President Trump. But like the sleazy caricature of a politician that he is, he worked even harder to maintain the ruling class status quo behind the scenes, so it could pick up right where it left off when Trump leaves office.
That’s exactly what he intends to do, and he will. If we let him.
Unfortunately for Mitch, Democrats still hate him for the simple reason that there’s an “R” next his name, and the America First genie isn’t going back in the bottle. Along with the angry Democrats, there are around 70 million pissed off Republicans who are finally beginning to truly understand that the ruling class, of which McConnell is a capo, utterly hates them.
The wrath and anger and fury towards the Republican establishment that President Trump harnessed to get elected in the first place isn’t going away with President Trump. In fact, just the opposite is going to happen. It’s only going to get worse. And all of that anger will be channeled towards the traitors who worked against the America First agenda and the will of Republican voters.
Democrats still loathe him, and Republicans have their pitchforks in hand.
So in the words of the immortal Tommy Heinsohn, Mitch McConnell should go home to his wife. Because nobody here loves him.