Views from the nation’s press

The New York Daily News on how Mitch Mcconnell’s legacy of brazen hypocrisy:

What is Mitch Mcconnell’s legacy as leader of Senate Republicans? A lot of procedurally astute but brazenly hypocritical moves to strengthen the power of his party in the chamber.

He twisted the rules to set a pernicious, disrespectful, antidemocratic precedent that in an election year, a president’s Supreme Court nominee would be summarily denied hearings. And so, Justice Antonin Scalia’s replacement was not Merrick Garland, tapped by President Barack Obama, but Neil Gorsuch, chosen by Donald Trump.

Then, in a breathtaking turnabout in 2020, Mcconnell ignored his own rule to rush through another Trump choice, Amy Coney Barrett, to fill the seat vacated by the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In early 2021, he voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial over his role on Jan. 6 and his refusal to accept the 2020 election results — failing to take the one definitive step that would have barred the demagogue and wannabe dictator from holding any office again.

In practically the same breath, he took to the Senate floor and delivered pointed remarks truthfully stating that “Jan. 6 was a disgrace,” and that ... “former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

When the president was named George W. Bush, Mcconnell pressed for unpaid-for tax cuts that gave the biggest benefits to highest-income Americans. When the president was named Obama, Mcconnell tacked hard in the wind, blaming the president for every dollar of budget imbalance and using the nation’s debt limit as a bargaining tool.

When the president was named Trump, Mcconnell again championed irresponsible tax hikes that again ballooned deficits and debt. And now, with Joe Biden in the big chair, Mcconnell has again assumed the role of fiscal mischief-maker, empowering those on the hard right who wanted to take the country to the brink . ...

Mitch Mcconnell will be remembered as a savvy tactician who, by skillfully manipulating the rules of the Senate, got the better of Democrats in many partisan battles. He will also be remembered as a man who, though claiming to put principle above all else, proved he had almost none.