Profiles in Mendacity & Moral Cowardice

Mitch McConnell: A mendacious moral coward

After he voted yesterday to acquit the ex-president of guilt for inciting the Jan.6 coup attempt, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell made a short speech attacking Donald Trump as “practically and morally responsible.” McConnell said Jan. 6 attack happened because the mob “had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth, because he was angry he had lost an election.” Despite that, McConnell acquitted the ex-president on a false legal argument that a former president cannot be impeached. The Senate itself voted that it had the power to impeach the ex-president and legal scholars all believe that is constitutionally sound.

In his speech, McConnell lied by blaming Pelosi for delaying the Senate impeachment process. Immediately after his speech, Pelosi stated in public that the timing of the Senate impeachment trial was entirely due to McConnell. It is clear that McConnell always intended to protect the ex-president from impeachment. His delay in starting the Senate trial until one hour after Biden was sworn in helped solidify the bogus legal loophole he cited as his excuse to protect the ex-president.

McConnell's little speech was a propaganda masterpiece grounded in mendacity, moral cowardice and party self-interest.[1] He did not have to make any public comments at all. He did not have to lie and try to blame Pelosi for the timing of a proceeding he had complete control over. Attacking the ex-president now, was far too little and too late. There is no moral courage in truth telling when it no longer matters.

So why did he make that speech? A few commentators yesterday suggested a plausible explanation: Money, power and party loyalty. It had nothing to do with trying to set the record straight for the public. McConnell could have been doing that shortly after the Nov. 3 election when the ex-president was lying about an illegitimate election. What McConnell was doing was speaking to major republican donors. Some rich republicans had been making noises that they were considering stopping all cash flows to the fascist GOP in view of the 1/6 coup attempt and the ex-president's toxic effects on republican power and wealth. 

What McConnell was doing in that speech was a necessary attempt to save the party by keeping the cash flowing in. The fact that there was a violent coup attempt fomented by the ex-president was not McConnell's concern. Money and power for the republican party and politicians was his concern.

McConnell will not face the wrath of the ex-president's rabid supporters in the next election because he was just re-elected on Nov. 3 for another six years. He is 79 years old now and unlikely to run again. Even if he does run in 2026, GOP voters won't remember yesterday's attack on the ex-president. There was neither honesty nor moral courage in his speech. 

What is the GOP?

Since 44 GOP senators voted not guilty, one can believe that they are actual fascists, regardless of the excuse they may point to as the reason for their vote. Seven voted guilty, maybe leaving them as the radical right authoritarian wing of the GOP in the Senate. Or, maybe it just masks quiet fascism. None of the seven complain about the dozens of voter suppression laws that red states have passed since the Nov. 3 election.[2] That is tacit support for fascist single party rule.

What the party leadership is after the impeachment is the same as what it was before. A self-interested group of incredibly arrogant elites lusting for power and wealth. They work in service to powerful and wealthy people and interests. That policy and ideology comes at the expense of the public interest. The fascist GOP opposes free and fair elections. It's leaders lie whenever they deem it useful, even if their lies can be easily denied by evidence. These elites could not care less about democracy, truth, honest governance, competence or the well-being of the American people.

Footnotes: 

1. It is interesting that during the impeachment Schumer asked for and got Senate permission to read aloud George Washington's 1796 farewell address to the American people. I think that will happen when the Senate reconvenes after the impeachment. In retrospect, the reason for that makes a lot of sense. Washington's letter contains blunt, urgent warnings about the deadly danger to democracy of a vindictive, demagogic, authoritarian political party in power. Schumer probably foresaw how this would play out and what it meant in terms of power and politics. At least, that's how I see it now. At the time, I was baffled as to why Schumer mentioned the letter at all.

2. From a Jan. 24, 2021 article: 

Republican legislators across the country are preparing a slew of new voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s defeat.

Georgia will be the focal point of the GOP push to change state election laws, after Democrats narrowly took both Senate seats there and President Joe Biden carried the state by an even smaller margin. But state Republicans in deep-red states and battlegrounds alike are citing Trump’s meritless claims of voter fraud in 2020 — and the declining trust in election integrity Trump helped drive — as an excuse to tighten access to the polls.  

Some Republican officials have been blunt about their motivations: They don’t believe they can win unless the rules change. “They don’t have to change all of them, but they’ve got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning,” Alice O’Lenick, a Republican on the Gwinnett County, Ga., board of elections in suburban Atlanta, told the Gwinnett Daily Post last week. She has since resisted calls to resign.

The chair of the Texas Republican Party has called on the legislature there to make “election integrity” the top legislative priority in 2021, calling, among other things, for a reduction in the number of days of early voting. .... Trump plans to remain involved in “voting integrity” efforts, keeping the issue at the top of Republicans' minds.