Tag: Mitch McConnell

McConnell in tricky spot with GOP, big biz

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a longtime ally of the business community, now finds himself in a tricky position of having to manage the GOP’s increasingly awkward relationship with corporate America. 

McConnell, in a major break from character, earlier this week slammed companies such as Major League Baseball, Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola for criticizing Georgia’s new election law, which President Biden called “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” 

The GOP leader called that a complete mischaracterization and has repeatedly pointed to a Washington Post analysis giving Biden “four Pinocchios” for “falsely” claiming Georgia’s statute ends voting hours earlier.  Continue reading.

McConnell backs away from warning businesses to stay out of politics

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday backed off his stern warning that companies such as Major League Baseball, Delta and Coca-Cola should stay out of high-profile political fights after they criticized Georgia’s new election law.

“I didn’t say that very artfully yesterday. They’re certainly entitled to be involved in politics. They are. My principal complaint is they didn’t read the darn bill,” McConnell said Wednesday at a press conference in Paducah, Kentucky.

The GOP leader softened his tough talk from earlier in the week, when he warned that companies would face “serious consequences” if they become “a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country.” Continue reading.

The Memo: Politics upended as top Republicans slam corporate America

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has lashed out at corporations involving themselves in politics this week — a development that makes it seem as if politics has entered an alternative reality.

For his entire career, McConnell has been assiduous in courting big business and has been a staunch defender of corporate interests.

He has been a stalwart opponent of campaign finance reform and, roughly a decade ago, expressed approval of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case. The court’s 2010 ruling bestowed upon corporations many of the rights to free speech enjoyed by individual citizens and loosened restrictions on political donations. Continue reading.

McConnell says companies should stay out of politics — unless they’re donating money

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After the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that companies could finance election spending, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) celebrated the prospect that corporate America would enter — and influence — the political fray.

“For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process,” he said in a statement at the time. He hailed the decision, Citizens United, as “an important step” in “restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups.”

But just over a decade later, McConnell has a different message for companies: Unless it involves money, they had better stay quiet. Continue reading.

‘Strom Thurmond disagrees’: Historians refute McConnell claim that filibuster has ‘no racial history’

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Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday made the sweeping claim that the legislative filibuster has “no racial history at all” and further insisted that historians don’t dispute his view—an assertion that historians immediately disputed.

“Strom Thurmond disagrees,” tweeted historian Patrick Wyman, referring to the late Republican senator from South Carolina whose 24-hour filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 remains the longest in U.S. history.

During a press briefing Tuesday, McConnell offered a full-throated defense of the filibuster amid growing calls by Senate Democrats to significantly weaken or abolish the 60-vote rule, which in its current form gives the minority party enormous power to block legislation. Progressive advocacy groups and some Democratic lawmakers have taken to describing the filibuster as a “Jim Crow relic” to denote its past use as a weapon against civil rights legislation. Continue reading.

Russian company ‘suspending its investments’ in Kentucky project pushed by McConnell: report

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suffered a major economic defeat in Kentucky as a Russian company founded by oligarch Oleg Deripaska pulled its financing.

“According to a Bloomberg report, Rusal, the formerly blacklisted Russian company with a major stake in the 10-figure project, is suspending its investments while it awaits word that its U.S. partners have raised the necessary funds. So far the company has sunk at least $65 million in the proposed mill, to be built by Unity Aluminum, previously known as Braidy Industries,” WUKY-TV reported Thursday. “The news is only the latest twist for the troubled project, which has been plagued by fundraising questions and the ouster of the CEO formerly overseeing the venture. Rusal’s involvement has been controversial from the start, after it was revealed that the company had been subject to sanctions.”

In 2019, The Washington Post reported how McConnell blocked a bill to keep sanctions in place on the company. Continue reading.

‘I’ve got news for Mitch McConnell — he broke the Senate’: Ex-senator kills ’empty threat’ from GOP leader

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took to the floor Tuesday to claim that if Democrats change the filibuster now that they are in charge, it would be a “scorched Earth” move. The problem with the claim, according to one former senator, is that McConnell is the one who broke the senate to begin with.

Speaking to MSNBC’s Brian Williams, former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said that McConnell’s threats at this point are empty because there’s nothing worse that he can do whether in or out of power. 

“Well, that’s what he’s trying to do, but I’ve got news for Mitch McConnell: he kind of broke the Senate,” she said. “He’s the one that has used the rules in a way they were never intended to be used. And he has done it with gleeful abandon over and over and over again. The senate has become broken. The regular order is gone. There’s not debate. There are no amendments. It is just a mere shadow of what it used to be. So, the question is, should you have to stand up and own your obstructionism?” Continue reading.

Spooked McConnell Threatens ‘Scorched Earth’ To Protect Filibuster

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As momentum grows to eliminate a tool Republicans have used over the years to kill overwhelmingly popular legislation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday threatened to make the Senate into an unbearably slow and hostile work environment as retribution.

“Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, can even begin to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like,” the Kentucky senator declared in a speech on the Senate floor, referring to what he’d do if Democrats repealed the filibuster, the extended debating tactic that makes it possible for the chamber’s minority to block legislation. Invocation of cloture, a move to limit the debate, requires a total of 60 votes to be adopted.

McConnell said he’d require a quorum to be present to conduct even mundane business. That would slow down work in the Senate because it would pull lawmakers from committee hearings and take away time senators have to meet with constituents in their offices in Washington, D.C. Continue reading.

McConnell offers scathing ‘scorched earth’ filibuster warning

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Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) offered a scathing warning to Democrats on Tuesday, amid growing pressure to nix the legislative filibuster.

“Let me say this very clearly for all 99 of my colleagues: Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, can even begin, to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like,” McConnell said.

He added that in a chamber that functions on a day-to-day basis by consent, meaning all senators sign off on an action, “I want our colleagues to imagine a world where every single task, every one of them, requires a physical quorum.”  Continue reading.

McConnell says he’d back Trump as 2024 GOP nominee

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who just weeks ago excoriated former President Trump on the Senate floor, blaming him for the riot at the Capitol, on Thursday said he would back Trump if he wins the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

“There’s a lot to happen between now and ’24. I’ve got at least four members that I think are planning on running for president. … Should be a wide open race,” McConnell said during an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier.

Asked if he would support Trump if he wins the party’s nomination in 2024, McConnell added: “The nominee of the party? Absolutely.” Continue reading.