The Washington Post has published a quasi-profile of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. It is a halfhearted attempt at pretending that the man who led the Republican Party to do nothing except deregulate and lower taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations while fostering the rabid bigotry of a disenfranchisement-fearing white voter base (which led to electing Donald Trump) is somehow in a weird place now. He’s the head of the minority party but the GOP’s base dislikes him now more than ever, in no small part because Donald Trump likes using him as a punching bag. The story hinges on this concept: “Yet in the months since the Jan. 6 attack, a different portrait of McConnell has taken shape. At 79, safely reelected last year to a seventh term and in his 16th year as the Senate’s top Republican, McConnell is nonetheless increasingly playing the role of a conflicted and compromised booster of Trump’s interests — not a leader with his own vision.” What is this grand McConnell vision? According to the Post, it was his abilities at “leveraging chamber rules to thwart much of President Barack Obama’s agenda and to block judicial nominees, including a key Supreme Court seat.” Funny. That’s not a “vision,” that’s just an individual’s power grab using the most nihilistic machinations to achieve … what, exactly? Buried in this strange profile is one interesting nugget of information. It points to McConnell’s greatest failure through the years: his 180-degree turnaround on the Voting Rights Act. Read more