Bill Straub: Placing party above country, McConnell will now face the reality of a President Trump

WASHINGTON – So, exactly who was that man with a plastered-on grin trailing Donald J. Trump like a labradoodle as the president-elect took his post-election home run trot through the halls of Congress?

Well, you can rein in the bloodhounds, we’ve found him. It was none other than our own Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Louisville, all but tripping the light fantastic over the political alignment he has long desired – GOP control of the House, Senate and, as of Jan. 20, the White House.

Of course this is the same Mitch McConnell who was so embarrassed by the foolishness of his party’s standard bearer throughout the long presidential campaign that he refused to speak his name or even consider addressing his too-numerous-to-list transgressions during the closing weeks, acting as if he had detected the smell of rotten eggs every time the subject was broached.

But that did not stop our hero from reveling in the Trump victory, showing yet again that Mitch McConnell is the modern physical embodiment of Sir Harry Flashman – the great literary anti-hero who flees danger at first sniff but pivots to reap acclimation after risk passes and victory is assured. He quickly transformed from stony, glum-faced silence – his favored demeanor — to celebration when the returns started flowing in Trump’s favor.

“After eight years of the Obama administration, the American people have chosen a new direction for our nation,’’ McConnell said in a statement. “President-elect Trump has a significant opportunity to bring our nation together. It is my hope and intent that we succeed in the years ahead by working together with our colleagues across the aisle to strengthen our national and economic security.”

Should the Senate find itself “working together’’ in a bipartisan basis it will certainly be for the first time in at least eight years, even though McConnell, as is his nature, continues to blame President Obama for the federal government’s dolefulness.

My friend Jamie Lucke, an editorial writer for the Lexington Herald-Leader, penned an outstanding column earlier this month imagining what progress could have been made in the land of the free had McConnell chosen to work with President Obama instead of opposing almost every one of his initiatives, citing McConnell’s alleged legislative hero, the late Republican Sen. John Sherman Cooper, of Somerset, who extended an open hand as opposed to a clenched fist to the young President John F. Kennedy.

In an op-ed response, McConnell, as is his wont, sought to shift the blame for legislative malaise in Obama’s lap. First he held that the election proved “a resounding repudiation of the last eight years of failed liberal policies,’’ failing to note, of course, that Trump, at this point, received only 46.5 percent of the popular vote, that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton likely will best him by 2 million votes and that he only survived through the mercy of the Electoral College. And, of course, that Obama’s approval rating rests at 56 percent according to Gallup.

But that’s beside the point.

If President Obama had been genuinely interested in achieving historic reforms in a bipartisan manner, McConnell claimed, “he had his chance.’’

“After appeasing his left flank, President Obama abandoned any efforts to cooperate with Republicans,’’ McConnell said. “He spent most of his presidency pursuing an ideological agenda that had no chance of passing and waging a nonstop campaign against Congress. Now, as he prepares to leave office, it’s clear that strategy didn’t work.’’

I only wish my editor would permit me to use a stronger term than hogwash.

There exists a prima facie case that McConnell never intended to cooperate with Obama in any way, shape or form. He has said so in his own words. First there was his infamous line, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,’’ which he can defend by saying it was uttered in October 2010 – more than a year and a half after Obama took the oath, more than enough time to provide comity.

Fair enough. Harder to defend are claims in a book by Michael Grunwald, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era, where the author notes that McConnell, in early 2009, laid out his no honeymoon strategy of resistance The book provides a quote from the late Sen. George Voinovich, R-OH: “If he was for it, we had to be against it.”

Vice President Joe Biden told Grunwald that he was warned during the transition not to expect any bipartisan cooperation on major votes.

“I spoke to seven different Republican Senators who said, ‘Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ ” he told Grunwald. Biden asserted that the lawmakers informed him that McConnell had demanded unified resistance. “The way it was characterized to me was, ‘For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back.’’

Then, in 2011, McConnell told The Atlantic that Republicans had “worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off’’ administration proposals.

“Because we thought — correctly, I think — that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan,’’ he said. “When you hang the ‘bipartisan’ tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there’s a broad agreement that that’s the way forward.”

Yet, obviously, the era of obstructionism and ill will was all Obama’s fault. This is the sort of junk McConnell has been peddling Kentuckians and their fellow Americans for years and years. Now, since it serves his purposes, he’s admiringly quoting Obama about cooperation.

“As President Obama reminded us, we are all on one team,’’ McConnell said in a Nov. 15 speech on the Senate floor. “This is an intramural scrimmage. We are not Democrats first. We are not Republicans first. We are Americans first. We are patriots first. Now, as he put it, we are all rooting for the success of the President-elect for uniting and leading the country.’’

It’s all so unseemly since McConnell has always – correct that – in his most recent embodiment has always — placed party above country. And it’s all right there for the world to see.

It’s impossible to overstate the damage McConnell has wreaked through his mindless recalcitrance. Ultimately, history will not serve this man well.

As for now, McConnell has already started the backing and filling on some of the solemn vows he made should Republicans morph into the three-headed monster of government. The promised coal renaissance, beating back the Obama army in the War on Coal? Well, maybe not so much.

“We are going to be presenting to the president (Trump) a variety of options that could end this assault,” McConnell said. “Whether that immediately brings business back, that’s hard to tell because this is a private sector activity.”

That didn’t take long. It was a private sector activity when McConnell was hinting those jobs will miraculously reappear, out of thin, filthy, smoky, carbon dioxide laden air, with Republicans in charge, even though the industry’s demise has more to do with the rise of natural gas than anything else.

Regardless, the whole made up War on Coal was a good thing, McConnell told reporters, because it probably helped Trump in Ohio, Pennsylvania and, of course, Kentucky.

Party first.

Always.

Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. A member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, he currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.