Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Friday that he won’t apologize for working with Democrats.
“If you paid any attention to my recent history, I’m not opposed to reaching agreements with this administration,” McConnell told the Lexington Herald-Leader.
He highlighted his role in striking deals with Vice President Joe Biden on the extension of the Bush tax cuts, the 2011 Budget Control Act and the fiscal cliff crisis late last year.
“I brokered all three of them with Joe Biden,” McConnell said. “I do not have the view that it’s inappropriate to talk to Democrats.”
McConnell noted that while he would prefer to have a Republican in the White House and a GOP-controlled Senate, he must accept the current circumstances.
“I’ve fully demonstrated that as much as I would rather have a Republican president and would rather be the majority leader of the Senate, I’m willing to work with the government we have — not the one I wish we had,” he said.
Alright facing a Republican challenger in his re-election next year, McConnell has taken heat in recent days from conservatives who are upset that he and other GOP leaders have abandoned the effort to halt the Affordable Care Act.
The Tea Party Nation withdrew its endorsement of the Kentucky senator on Wednesday, while RedState.com editor Erick Erickson wrote Thursday that McConnell and other GOP leaders have paved the way for “a real third party movement that will fully divide the Republican Party.”
