McConnell's speeches won't save his beloved legacy after he lets Trump off the hook
It was no surprise to see Kentucky’s two Senators vote to let their Dear Leader off the hook again. Sen. Rand Paul, who is turning more and more into an ongoing series of jokes on late night TV, is up for re-election in 2022 and has been a steady suck-up since November 2016, when he changed his original opinion on Trump as a “delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag.”
McConnell, however, has now contorted himself into a strange pretzel-shaped politician hated by everyone. For Democrats, his vote to acquit, shortly followed by a fiery speech denouncing Trump is more McConnellian hypocrisy, coming right after his next best in saying he couldn’t convict Trump after his presidency was over when he delayed the trial until his presidency was over. That’s a lot of contorting.
But he’s not fooling the Trumpists, who now call him a RINO. They see through his winks to Trump voters and his nods to corporate donors who now realize that Trump is bad for their brands. Votes that mean one thing and speeches that mean another don’t get you anywhere but stuck.
Everyone sees through him now. He may have helped create the modern Republican party, but when it most needed saving, he was nowhere to be found. He could have given political cover to his colleagues to stand up to Trump and the attack on Jan. 6, but as I wrote before, the monster he helped create was no longer in his control.
Those two speeches — the first in which McConnell finally acknowledged the election results far too late in the process, and the second in which he excoriated Trump for events for which he had earlier in the day excused him — will be put into the Congressional record. But they will not be enough to give him what he wants: A legacy as a great American statesman.
Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/linda-blackford/article249249260.html#storylink=cpy
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