Mitch McConnell is one of two Congressional Republicans who set us on the path to Donald Trump - the other being Newt Gingrich. There are sundry media figures who anticipated and abetted his rise, but McConnell and Gingrich were uniquely malevolent forces in breaking Congress.
I'm reading Geoffrey Kabaservice's Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party from Eisenhower to the Tea Party. As the subtitle suggests, it does not anticipate the rise of a populist demagogue like Trump (I'm about halfway through), but it talks about how moderate and even progressive forces in the GOP worked to sideline the worst aspects of far right politics, in this case the John Birch Society nutters. The election of Nixon in 1968 was a triumph for the moderates, which is a testament to how far right the Birchers were.
Gingrich and McConnell brought the Bircher point of view into the leadership of Congress. The advent of the GOP as a post-legislative party incapable of doing the necessary work of writing laws, especially ones that require bipartisan approval is directly tied to these two evil men. McConnell more than anyone else is responsible for the deeply broken nature of the Senate.
McConnell's retirement announcement comes because he - for all the destruction that he caused that actively led to the rise of Trump - is not a creature of Vladimir Putin. His party has become at least partly in thrall to a Russian dictator. It has gone self-evidently insane, in the sense of being divorced from objective reality.
Because McConnell doesn't "like" Trump and actively opposes Putin's efforts to end American democracy, he will be given plaudits that he does not fucking deserve. He made the bed that we all have to lie in. Don't believe the encomiums that will be tossed his way. He broke America.
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