I seem to have stirred a bit of a hornet’s nest among my Democratic friends for throwing a bouquet to Mitch McConnell for his denouncement of Trump while voting to acquit on “constitutional” grounds. Let me be clear. It was a very convenient out for him. But he is the leader of the Senate Republicans and he also wants to be part of saving the Republican Party from Trump.
I have written about the Faustian bargain he and others made with Trump. Their behavior is inexcusable. What is necessary, however, is not letting Trump continue to dominate one of our two national political parties.
This was the opening salvo of the war in that party and McConnell wants to be part of it. A vote to convict would have potentially sidelined him as he would have been at odds with the overwhelming majority of his caucus.
This is hard to write. I don’t like him and believe his behavior regarding Merrick Garland was deplorable. But we have to try to recognize that Democrats have not always acted appropriately when faced with choices that might have portended political cost. What is important, it seems to me, is to call out bad behavior from both parties’ office holders and recognize that some things have value to the country writ large regardless of our opinion of the source.
From This Corner 
Ambassador Katz, You may mean well , but IMHO, your clarification just doesn’t cut it. The Republican Party has shown that it wants only to gain and retain power by any means possible: lying, cheating, and stealing. The GOP welcomes white supremacists; why should it be saved? We deserve representatives in ALL parties who are honest, moral, and want to work for the good of ALL the people not just the rich. Morally, McConnell is on par with Trump and should also be shunned. You may want to stop trying to clarify your position.
LikeLike
If every Republican we don’t like is the moral equivalent of Trump, than no labels or judgments mean anything. That is empirically false. Where I think we have to be honest, though, is that McConnell himself did help enable the Big Lie by being very equivocal for weeks after the election for very calculated reasons. I would find his denunciations more compelling if he would express some responsibility. But he is at heart in many ways an institutionalist. That means that for all of his serious sins, he cares about respect for certain basic norms. Trump’s unwillingness to eventually concede was already a bridge too far for him. He was very clear about that as he spoke on January 6 before the riot unfolded. His comments in its aftermath were much more critical of Trump than any Republican leader of similar stature. This is just a fact. And this is Ambassador Katz’s point: he drew an important line in the sand. It’s not where I’d draw the line, but it’s still a relevant line and most GOP leaders gave up on drawing any lines at all with Trump long ago. McConnell gave that speech after seeing Liz Cheney censured by her own state’s GOP. He isn’t doing this for a donor class, because he will lose as many donors with this speech as he’ll gain. And Kentucky is not a state where this speech helps him politically. He’s saying that he wants a GOP rid of Trump rather than one that embraces him. A sane Republican party re-emerging would be good for the country. We all ought to be able to agree on that. I appreciate Ambassador Katz clarifying his position. And we might want to remind ourselves that the very premise of the work he does at American Public Square is that if we stop demonizing each other all the time when we disagree and instead start listening, we just might come to acknowledge that there’s more than one legitimate way to see an issue.
LikeLike