Trump won’t change the GOP. We’ll change him: Sen Mitch McConnell

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/01/trump-wont-change-the-gop-well-change-him-sen-mitch-mcconnell.html

I'm curious @Jack Hays whether you consider this particular caveat Mitch had in mind to have aged very well. Feel free to skip this if you like, but I'm reminded of, iirc, something about you having an opinion that McTurtle was a politico operative of stellar attainment.

I'm disappointed with Mitch to be honest. I agree completely with this paragraph from his Wiki page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_McConnell

In his early years as a politician in Kentucky, McConnell was known as a pragmatist and a moderate Republican. Over time he shifted to the right and became more conservative. According to one of his biographers, McConnell transformed "from a moderate Republican who supported abortion rights and public employee unions to the embodiment of partisan obstructionism and conservative orthodoxy on Capitol Hill." McConnell has widely been described as an obstructionist.

I remember when his threat to open a Senate Inquiry into the College Football Bowl organization on behalf of his undergrad alma mater scored a berth for Louavull & Schnellenberger. Fun stuff. DFT, not so much....

 

trump not only changed the Republican Party, he made the worst of them lead the party under his leadership.

If we had any other president in history trying to blow up negotiations in congress to help their reelection pretty much all supporters would have abandoned them — now they cheer.

It’s really sad to see what’s happening, I just hope America can wake up in time.

 

MAGA worships the Golden Calf, it's too late

 

Moscow Mitch? You can't be serious....he'll fold like a cheap suit if Agent Orange's threatens his getting even richer while in Congress.

 

Mitch McConnell is a cancer that needs to be removed.

DJT was and will be again the best President in my lifetime. Even better than Reagan.

America First.

And if this triggers you, I don't give a damn.

 

What he said in 2016 was what he needed to say to keep his party together and give them a chance to win. They did; Mitch played it right.
The Wiki entry reflects the polarization of the authors as much as any evolution in Mitch's views.
In the last year or so I think there has been evidence that father time is calling an end to Mitch's career. I still regard him as the preeminent figure of the era.

 

LOL! How did that go, Mitch? Mitch will go down in history as another opportunistsic politician who sacrificed principles for political power, bowing down to the great MAGA leader. Mitch could have freed the country and the GOP from Trump after 1/6/21. But, no, he was afraid that the MAGA crowd would make him pay, so he decided to vote against throwing out Trump, while he really knew that Trump is a self-centered spoiled little child who destroys everything he touches. Way to go Mitch, to choose personal political power over country....

 

From the OP link, this specific prediction has specifically proven to be wicked wrong:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday he does not agree with the view that Republicans will lose the party if Donald Trump is elected president.

“He’s not going to change the platform of the Republican Party, the views of the Republican Party,” McConnell told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“I think we’re much more likely to change him because if he is president, he’s going to have to deal with sort of the right-of-center world, which is where most of us are.”

I certainly do not disagree with your view he has been a preeminent figure of his era.

 

An honest History will see DJ Trump as either as America's last faint hope to avoid collapse into a neofascist hell or as the successful destroyer of America's brief flirtation with neofascism. As for Mitch McConnell likely his only worth while achievement will be seen as keeping the Neofascist stooge currently serving head of the DOJ off the supreme court. Beyond that he is simply another say anything do nothing Neocon who was all too willing to send America's best and brightest to die in an idiotic quest to achieve military dominance while the left destroyed our economic dominance upon which any military dominance must ultimately rest.

 

Further note the GOP had already begun to change and not in the direction Mitch and the Neocons wanted. The creation of the Tea Party was the opening salvo in the battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party. Trump is a figure head for the nonce, Desantis is the heir apparent, Ramaswamy waits in the wings to help with the coming change. Another for years of Biden and America is essentially done with Patriots and heroes under lock and key while idiots, swine, and fools divide the scraps among themselves

 

Mitch McConnell is the preeminent figure of the US Senate and yes Washington and has been for over a decades. Not much of real import happens without it going through Mitch McConnells pudgy and wrinkled hands. Not many politicians can see the long game like Mitch nor can impact it so definitively. (Nobody in Washington with a brain thinks Trump killed Roe by stacking the federal courts. They know Mitch did it over decades)

But he is not a man to be turned into a two dimensional caracature. He is a Republican party animal, a patriot (of sorts), Washington institutionalist by nature. But when those roles conflict, when serving one role, he risks another, he's going to want to figure out how to minimize harm and maximize benefit. Normally its the party that ascends to the top of his priority list, and that is why he's still leader of his caucus when nobody else in that party can even threaten him. Even Trump and his MAGA minions cannot dislodge the bespeckled testudine from Kentucky They haven't even come close.

But time can and will...

 

That's because the prediction was not intended to be a prediction, but rather a management tool to get his party over the 2016 finish line. Sometimes politicians' utterances should be taken seriously but not literally.

 

Repubs already showed their true colors when they let trump get away with sedition and treason after he lost the election. If trump were to win, they would promptly stick their heads back up his ass because they don’t care about their country, just getting re-elected.

 

I'm sure you've made a sublime point of some sort here JH.

Let me think about it a bit.

 

As you wish.

 

Your argument in defense of McConnell's role with bringing DFT on board as the R candidate back in 15/16 is what is JH. The consequences of this are clear and the impending risk to a "right-of-center" old school R platform are gone, done, TOAST. Not only can the Rs no longer be considered as euphemistically just a slightly more fiscally & militarily responsible platform that is "right-of-center" to D's platform: it is now exactly what @Lee Atwater has labelled it: the Party of Trump.

We have 100 Senators, most of whom are nowhere close with wielding the power and stroke available to McTurtle.

Saved the R party with a "victory" in 16?

No, it seems to me he helped to destroy it beyond recognition, as your posts regarding the candidacy of DFT here in 24 are clearly in agreement with.

Keeping the party together came at what price?

One price of it is that the R party is now the party that is responsible for withdrawing US support from the Ukraine.

As a former high ranking CIA officer, I cannot for an instant believe this is a development you ever anticipated or find yourself in agreement with.

Leadership matters, and it is a direct consequence of the trade-offs McConnell thought he understood himself to be making by conceding to DFT's demands to run as an R candidate rather than as an independent that the R party now finds itself stuck with DFT and his obligations to Russian interests.

 

Did you sign that fake bullshit election interfering letter too? Everyone of those turds need to be locked up.

 

Bingo.

“He’s not going to change the platform of the Republican Party, the views of the Republican Party,” McConnell told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

What platform? The group of congressional Repubs is singularly focused on tax cuts for the rich and corporate America. That and forcing women to carry pregnancies to term even if it kills them.

 

Mitch did not bring DJT on board; in fact I suspect he did not welcome DJT's arrival. That said, once DJT was there Mitch did what he could to help his party.
I tell people I'm an old-fashioned Midwest Republican; my party no longer exists.

 

Well obviously, he failed.
What’s ironic is that had he chosen to help his country instead of his party, he would have helped both.
Instead, his party is now a mob of extremist bootlickers devoted to pandering to the whims of a seditious traitor.

 

May 4, 2016
Mitch McConnell issues tepid endorsement of Donald Trump

Yes, I'll concede that McTurtle did not have had the ability to prevent DFT's nomination in 2016.

He very likely could have prevented it this year by using his position to obtain ten more votes in the Senate on 2/13/21 to impeach DFT.

 

There was nothing he could have done to stop Trump. Next best course was to try to improve Trump's behavior.

 

The impeachment attempts were feckless and misguided efforts that were/are part of the problem, not the solution.

 

Reagan took down Soviet Empire, ended cold war and created 16 million jobs.

But yes , Trump’s presidency is better then Reagan.

After all Trump is America first and Reagan was a globalist who hated America!

There is a saying “ action speaks louder then the word”. Just saying “ America first doesn’t mean a s%%%, but it apparently mean a lot to Hilary’s deplorable crowed”.

 

I think we've been able to cull enough from McTreason's quotes to know he's never been a fan of Trump. Down deep he knows the danger Trump poses and despises his buffoonery. But as he's proven a number of times Mitch would crawl in bed with the Devil himself if it meant being able to impose his own personal vision on to Americans by any means at his disposal. He takes great pleasure in thwarting the will of the majority.