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At first glance it doesn’t seem so dangerous: Mitch McConnell. Image: keystone
Analysis
Joe Biden’s worst nightmare: This is Trump’s “Grim Reaper” McConnell
The party’s top congressman maintains his loyalty to the president and other senators online. Behind this is the hope of maintaining his own position.
With this statement, the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, dropped a bomb last Tuesday. Why What seems natural at first glance is extremely dangerous in the current situation. Mitch McConnell’s sentencing means Republicans will join Donald Trump’s policy of not recognizing the presidential winner, Joe Biden.
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McConnell did not speak of electoral fraud, as the president of the United States had done. It also did not directly declare Donald Trump the winner of the election. But McConnell refused to accept the democratic tradition in the United States of recognizing and congratulating the declared winner of the election. Apparently, he managed to swear the party to the Trump line.
The vast majority of Republicans in the Senate follow their majority leader. Only Senators Mitt Romney and Susan Collins have dared to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden. Aside from these two exceptions, only Republican politicians with nothing else to lose dare to step out of coverage: Jeb Bush, for example, the former governor of Florida and brother of former President George W. Bush.
If you follow historian Annika Brockschmidt, Mitch McConnell is one of the crucial pillars on which support for Trump’s autocratic policy of ignoring rests:
Who is Mitch McConnell?
Mitch McConnell himself hails from the US state of Kentucky, which is a Republican stronghold. He has represented the state in the Senate since 1985. Since 2007 McConnell has been chairman of the Republican parliamentary group, which has had a majority in the Senate since 2015. This could make him the staunchest opponent of an upcoming US president, Joe Biden. In the past, McConnell was known for blocking bipartisan bills in the Senate, earning him the nickname “Grim Reaper.”
McConnell, an attorney and attorney general, served as secretary of the Department of Justice during the administration of Republican President Gerald Ford prior to his political career. He tried several times to access political office, but failed until 1977. In the end he was elected Judge / Chief Executive of Jefferson County, the then highest political position in Jefferson County in the state of Kentucky with several hundred thousand inhabitants.
McConnell claims to have worked hard for this career. Consequently, he grew up in modest circumstances in the southern states of Alabama, Georgia, and Kentucky. His father served in the United States Army, which is why the family had to move several times. When McConnell contracted polio at a young age, his family barely managed to pay for the high costs of treatment and did not go bankrupt. McConnell’s career since then can be seen as an example of the “American dream.” Today he is one of the most powerful politicians in the United States.
He has a long career in American politics: Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Image: keystone
Mitch McConnell war bad moderat
What today seems difficult to imagine for many who face the leader of the hard majority: the “Grim Reaper” used to be a soft. After his election to the Senate in 1985, McConnell was initially known to be a moderate reformer within Republican senators.
McConnell stood up for abortion rights and the rights of workers and unions. In the past 35 years, however, it has moved increasingly to the right. His biographer Alec MacGillis describes him as a “cynic”. McConnell is now seen as “the embodiment of conservative orthodoxy and the party’s tactical blocking attitude on Capitol Hill.”
McConnell’s transformation is emblematic of the establishment of the Republican Party: Like him, his party has evolved over the past 35 years from a state-sponsored conservative party that practices value-oriented policies to a reserve of populists and opportunists like Newt Gingrich, spokesman for the Republicans in the US House of Representatives. 1995 to 1999, or Donald Trump. developed.
McConnell has accompanied and supported this development in the Senate. With the rise of the populist right-wing tea party movement within the Republican Party McConnell became increasingly open to the populist trends of the late 1990s. Republicans pledged first and foremost to mobilize their electorate.
In return, McConnell throws his own convictions overboard: When Constitutional Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September of this year, shortly before the U.S. presidential election, McConnell spoke in favor of a replacement for Judge Amy Coney Barett. , the judge, who is considered far-right. he was nominated by Trump within a few weeks and confirmed by the Senate.
Towards the end of Barack Obama’s term, McConnell had said that a president would not be allowed to nominate new justices to the Supreme Court at the end of his term because the voters would have to decide. The occasion then: after the death of Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, Obama had proposed the moderate Merrick Garland as his successor. With their majority in the Senate, Republicans made sure Garland was not even allowed to be heard, and Obama’s nomination fell through.
McConnell’s wife is a member of Trump’s cabinet
The Senate Majority Leader also has one foot in the White House in private: McConnell is the second wife of Republican Elaine Chao. Chao was George W. Bush’s Secretary of Labor for eight years and is the first Chinese-American politician with cabinet rank in US history. She is currently head of the Ministry of Transportation in Donald Trump’s cabinet.
McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, is Trump’s current Secretary of Transportation. Image: keystone
Chao comes from a wealthy Chinese family, possibly giving her and McConnell some advantages. She and her husband reportedly received at least $ 25 million in campaign aid from the Family of Chaos. And the Republican’s finances shouldn’t be in bad shape either: Among other things, Chao has shares in a highway construction company that he did not sell even after his appointment as transport minister. This earned him strong criticism due to the associated conflict of interest.
Thus, Mitch McConnell is considered to be extremely well connected in the White House, even if he is said to have a strained relationship with President Trump from time to time.
What’s behind McConnell’s support for Trump’s tactics?
Aside from tactical opportunism and the fact that most of the Republican Party is committed to its president, Trump’s tactics of contesting the election also give Mitch McConnell personally an advantage. In two months there will be another election, this time in Georgia. There it will then be decided whether the Republicans can maintain their majority in the Senate.
Mitch McConnell’s tactic of keeping the race for the White House as a tie for as long as possible may also be related to trying to turn Georgia’s election in a positive direction. Because without the support of the current president of the United States, it will be difficult to mobilize the electorate.
So if Georgia falls to the Democrats, it could be the end of the “Grim Reaper” as Senate Majority Leader. So McConnell would only be a minority leader, unless his GOP colleagues drop him altogether.
