No, really. Thanks to Mitch McConnell for confirming how he suckered most of the big DC publications with the faux drama over President Biden’s ‘veto threat’. The word from the bigs over the weekend was that yes, all knew that Democrats were proceeding with the two bills in tandem, that the two were linked. It was just that Biden made this too clear by saying he would not sign the bipartisan mini-bill if only that one came to his desk.
But now McConnell is helpfully clarifying that in fact he is objecting to what everyone knew in advance and that even he spoke about numerous times on the record.
McConnell is now insisting that Democrats commit to not passing a reconciliation bill or making any commitments within the Democratic caucus – between Democrats – to do both as the cost of Republicans sticking with the bipartisan mini-bill. In other words, he is confirming that the whole ‘linkage’ freakout was no more than pretextual nonsense used with the aim of using the mini-bill as a wedge not to find common ground where the two parties could but to sabotage the rest of the President’s agenda.
These worthies, with generous hearts, stepped forward to take McConnell’s claims of being stunned, hoodwinked, done dirty at face value and now he repays them like this. You hate to see it.
