Sen. Scott’s push for term limits should apply to ‘Moscow Mitch’
Rick Scott is right.
It’s long past time for “Moscow Mitch” McConnell to retire from the U.S. Senate, gallop off into the sunset and go back to Kentucky. Proverbially speaking, of course. Everybody knows most senators never leave D.C. They become lobbyists, profiting a second time off the insider knowledge they gained at our expense by holding a public trust.
When term limits ended Scott’s career as governor and he ran for U.S. Senate last year, he declared Washington broken and blamed it on career politicians who hang around too long.
Other than his rival, former Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, Scott didn’t name names — certainly not any of his fellow Republicans — but America’s poster boy for career politicians is the leader of Scott’s party, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
After Scott won, he signed onto a term limits bill filed by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to limit members of the House and Senate to 12 years each. It’s collecting dust.
Enacting term limits for Congress will require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, so it won’t happen. But it looked good as a YouTube video and sounded good to voters disgusted by a dysfunctional Congress.
“It’s common sense,” Scott said in a TV ad, standing in front of a dry-erase board showing an outline of the United States. “In Washington, they say term limits can’t be done. That’s nonsense.”
It is nonsense, and one reason is McConnell.
“I would say we have term limits now. They’re called elections,” McConnell said after the 2016 election, declaring the idea dead. “And it will not be on the agenda in the Senate.”
The most obstructionist Senate leader in history is up for re-election next year. Naturally he’s seeking another term, his seventh. He was first elected in 1984 and is 77 years old (yes, older than Joe Biden, but not by much). The taut-lipped McConnell endures, the dour face of D.C. dysfunction.
Once a moderate pro-union Republican, McConnell has become a stalwart defender of corporate interests. Once a vocal critic of the insidious effect of money in politics, he’s now the epitome of the influence of special interests. This is what a life spent in D.C. does to some people.
McConnell battled former President Barack Obama tooth and nail for eight years and said his goal was to make Obama a one-term president. He has used his power to tilt the Supreme Court and the federal courts to the right for decades to come.
By recently blocking an election protection bill designed to curb Russian interference, McConnell earned the nickname “Moscow Mitch,” and Democrats decided that he must want a system that’s vulnerable to hackers. That enraged him as he lashed out at “modern-day McCarthyism,” and proved for once that he’s not impervious to criticism.
Term limits are enormously popular with Americans, but they’re a bad idea. They have ravaged Tallahassee, stripping the Legislature of much of its institutional knowledge and making lobbyists and their long memories more powerful. The term limits clock forces ambitious House members to run for speaker before casting a single vote. It’s insane.
But seeing the intransigent and immovable McConnell running roughshod over America makes you rethink things.
Democrats might defeat President Donald Trump next year. But even if they do, McConnell is likely to keep presiding over the Senate for six more years. Until 2026. When he’s 83. That’s plenty of time to replace another two Supreme Court justices. It’s dispiriting. It’s enough to make me see that Rick Scott has a point.