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McConnell isn't dead, but I'll offer my 'tribute' to him now | Opinion

Following the unexpected death of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham on July 11, it seemed that any criticism of the South Carolinian online garnered the same response — “How dare you say that about a guy who just died?”

It didn’t seem like it mattered if the criticism was legitimate or not, whether it was questioning his sexuality while voting against gay and lesbian rights issues, or whether it was his flip-flopping on Donald Trump and becoming one of his biggest supporters.

The reaction from Republicans was largely the same.

That got me thinking about Sen. Mitch McConnell, who was rumored to be dead or on life support or in a coma or whatever and was the odds-on favorite to beat Graham to the gates of hell in the days before Graham’s death.

And, so with McConnell allegedly on the mend, I figured I’d go ahead and tell you what I think about McConnell now — when no one can complain, “How dare you write that about a dead guy?”

. . . And so, what to say about Mitch?

I wish the late Louisvillian, Hunter S. Thompson, were still around to tell the story of McConnell, the former Senate majority leader when he passes from the scene.

Thompson’s obituary upon the death of Richard Nixon was a master class in truth-telling. It painted Nixon as the detestable person he was, who nearly broke the government with his lies and his efforts to hold onto power at any cost.

And McConnell is every bit the detestable figure that Nixon was.

But unlike Nixon, McConnell never paid for his sins that have damaged our nation’s trust in government, destroyed the country’s ability to have meaningful dialogue and cemented our nation’s politics as an arena in which winning is the only thing that matters.

In fact, for all of Nixon’s flaws and crimes, he proved that the system worked as he was held accountable for what he had done. It took real leadership to do that though — Republican Sens. Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott and Rep. John Rhodes essentially forced him to resign.

The fall of Nixon was a triumph for our country.

It’s hard to imagine McConnell ever having the guts or the desire to protect the nation like Goldwater, Scott and Rhodes did that day in 1974 when they went to the White House and told Nixon it was over.

This isn’t to say that everything McConnell did was bad.

He stood forcefully for the ability to burn flags as a distasteful but protected exercise in free speech, and he brought money back to Kentucky much like the late Senate Democrat Robert Byrd did in West Virginia.

He claimed $38 million in unappropriated dollars to help build the Parklands in Louisville two decades ago and was instrumental in getting the money needed to build a companion to the Brent Spence Bridge between Covington and Cincinnati.

He was the leading force in pushing for a tobacco buyout that sent billions of dollars to Kentucky and protected the state’s farmers when the tobacco industry price supports went away.

As Jefferson County judge-executive, he nearly doubled the size of the Jefferson Memorial Forest, making it one of the largest urban forests in the United States. He fought for auto emissions testing to help clear the smog from Louisville’s air, and he was lauded nationally for his work on exploited and missing children.

. . . But none of that will matter.  

What he’ll be remembered for is two things that have done lasting damage to the country and its politics.

First is his cynical and hypocritical manipulation of the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation process that over a four-year period shifted the court from a center-right body to a far-right body that overturned 60 years of case law on civil rights and nearly a century of law that empowered Congress to check a president’s power.

The man who once boasted that he split with his party in 1964 and voted for Lyndon Johnson because of Goldwater’s opposition to civil rights was the key player in dismantling those rights he stood for as a young man.

. . “I was overwhelmed to witness such a moment in history, knowing that majorities in both parties voted for the bill,” McConnell wrote in his memoir, “The Long Game.”

As the court he built chipped away at the Voting Rights Act, McConnell cheered.

And it’s not just that he built this court — it’s the hypocritical way he did it.

McConnell blocked Barack Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia on the court in 2016, saying the American people should decide at the polls who got to make an appointment in the last year of an administration.

And then after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020, McConnell forced through theconfirmation of Amy Coney Barrett just eight days before Trump lost his reelection.

McConnell’s shenanigans turned what had been a 5-4 conservative majority —with one member being a reliable swing vote — into a solid 6-3 radical conservative court.

In the process, McConnell destroyed the court’s credibility with the American people.

. . But his biggest failing may be his embrace of a president who he believes is stupid and who he believes led an attempt to overthrow the United States’ government on Jan. 6, 2021.

All to protect and increase his own political power.

In the year after the attack on the Capitol, McConnell called it what it was.

"It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next,” he said in 2022.

And, in the days following the attack, he said that Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the insurrection.

But he refused to vote to convict Trump on impeachment charges.

. . Despite all this, when Trump ran for president in 2024, McConnell continued to support him.

Even when Trump said racist things about McConnell’s wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, McConnell continued to bend his knee.

And that is the legacy of Mitch McConnell.

He ends his career adopting the anti-civil rights positions Barry Goldwater supported, handed to him by a despised and distrusted Supreme Court that he created, but didn’t have an iota of the bravery Goldwater summoned to stand against a criminal and corrupt president.

Whew! I’m glad I got that off my chest while he’s still alive.