Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently accused the Obama Administration of “explicitly” trying to “make people believe that Congress can’t get anything done” by pushing legislation the president knows won’t receive the Republican support needed for passage.
In yet another spot-on critique, the Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen analyzes the “chutzpah” of McConnell’s claim by citing examples when the Kentucky Republican himself has shamelessly confessed to employing a strategy of unified Republican opposition to essentially every policy Democrats and President Obama have proposed.
Beyond blatantly admitting that making Obama a one-term president is the No. 1 goal of the Republican Party, McConnell has given further explanation of the GOP’s strategy not only to unseat the president, but to rally Americans against the Democratic Party. It calls for unified opposition to any and every policy Obama proposes – including those the party has previously supported – because unified Republican opposition, even if it is only symbolic, has the effect of “shifting American public opinion” against the Democratic agenda and “necessarily mak(ing) Democratic ideas less popular,” as Benen puts it.
“McConnell’s willingness to blame the president for McConnell’s own deliberate strategy is plainly insane,” Benen states.
I would add that the long list of partisan bills Republicans have pushed in the last 10 months is a far greater factor in shaping public sentiments about how “Congress can’t get anything done” than any policy the president has proposed.
