Thanks a Lot, Mitch – The American Spectator

There are rumors that the now-multiple public episodes of Sen. Mitch McConnell, the octogenarian leader of the Republican caucus, “freezing” in the middle of a speaking appearance are only the tip of a very disturbing iceberg. That’s the context underlying Wednesday’s spectacle in which McConnell shut down for an agonizing 30 seconds after being asked a question at a Chamber of Commerce forum back home in Kentucky…

BREAKING NEWS: Sen. Mitch McConnell appearing to have another scary episode in the media gaggle in Covington today. Aides had to step in to help him out and repeat questions. He was eventually lead away. We’ll have the full video on @WLWT pic.twitter.com/q9ex5MHxLV

— Hannah Thomas (@HannahPThomas) August 30, 2023

The latest episode was worse than the first one, which happened on July 26…

WATCH: Senator Mitch McConnell appears physically unwell during press conference. pic.twitter.com/L861NebuNF

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 26, 2023

…for a couple of reasons. First, it was of longer duration than the first “freeze,” in which McConnell was brought around somewhat by his colleague, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, and induced to head away from the podium.

But second, this latest catatonic moment came after McConnell was asked a question about running for reelection in 2026.

And the fact that a staffer who quickly jumped to his side and suggested to the audience that “we’re gonna need a minute” wasn’t able to move an unblinking, unresponsive McConnell away from the microphone might have been the most symbolically perfect exposition of McConnell, and the Republican establishment leadership which he so painfully represents.

Because it’s patently obvious — incontrovertible, if we’re being honest — that Mitch McConnell has no business contemplating a reelection campaign in 2026. Mitch McConnell should never have run for reelection in 2020. And it is downright farcical that he should remain as the Senate Minority Leader, a position he has well-earned not just because his caucus continues to follow him but because he’s done so much to sabotage efforts of the Republican Party to have the majority of the Senate.

Ask the Turtle about efforts to remain in power and he doesn’t engage. He goes into his shell where you can’t get to him.

This is a metaphor for the entire ruling class in America, obviously, and the continuous attempts by the citizenry of the country to engage them on the dysfunction and disaster they’ve set loose on us with insane policies, utter corruption and gross incompetence. You get a blank stare, an indication that you won’t get an answer because they’re incapable of giving you one, and then some functionary comes along to end the conversation.

With McConnell, it’s a belated exit from the stage. With Joe Biden it’s a disparaging comment and, essentially, a middle finger for being so bold as to ask the question. With less-decrepit members of the ruling class it’s cancellations and ugly accusations. But what it never is, what they will not give you, is that engagement or honest discussion so crucial to the survival of a constitutional republic.

Because that engagement would produce proof positive that these people have no business running this country. Whatever qualifications they once possessed were lost to old age and the corrupting influence of power long ago.

And yet it’s impossible to get rid of them.

Joe Biden is indispensable, despite his mounting mental incompetence, because the Obama machine of which he is clearly a puppet has no other plausible front man. This is why it’s so interesting to watch the continuous talk of Gavin Newsom as the Democrats’ next nominee; Newsom is many awful things, and Joe Rogan had him perfectly pegged a few days ago when he referred to him as a fake human being, but one thing which can be said about him is his boundless ego might outstrip even Barack Obama’s. Newsom would not allow himself to serve as the puppet for someone else’s regime, and because of that fact he’s very unlikely to be the nominee.

A sane Democrat Party would be scrambling to move on from Biden. This one cannot, because it’s ruled by a mostly-defunct radical-socialist cabal of Obama minions whose ideas and tactics have fermented from irrational exuberance to aggressive muscularity to outright thuggishness over the past 15 years, and the pursuit of raw political power is all it has left.

The same is true of McConnell. He’s run the GOP Senate caucus since 2007, about the same time that Team Obama began taking over the Democrat Party, and throughout that time McConnell’s only real success has been to maintain his own power, and the waterfall of filthy lucre it has afforded him.

The GOP has grossly underperformed in Senate election after Senate election since McConnell took the helm of that caucus. It has failed time and again to deliver on conservative policies or even beating back some of the worst aggressions of the left. His defenders point to the thinnest reed of partisan success — his check-mating of the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in 2016, refusing as then-Senate Majority Leader to entertain Garland’s nomination until after the election that year and then letting the matter drop altogether after President Trump’s victory.

But no honest observer could look at McConnell’s treatment of Garland and think Chuck Schumer or Harry Reid would have handled things any differently. This was the one time a Republican establishment political leader actually stood up for his own voters, and we’re supposed to treat it as a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card and an excuse for 16 years of utter failure.

And the worst of it is that McConnell can’t resign from the Senate even as his body and mind fall apart. Kentucky has a Democrat governor, and Andy Beshear says he will not honor a recently passed state law that requires a governor replacing a retired or deceased senator to choose someone from that senator’s political party.

So Kentucky must be stuck with a decrepit, frail Mitch McConnell until 2026, or at least until Kentucky’s Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is running against Beshear this fall, manages to win election and get himself inaugurated.

That’s the unfortunate tactical situation. It is what it is. It’s the reason McConnell should have thought of the country and his constituents instead of himself and rode off into the sunset in 2020. The Democrats have their own embarrassingly decrepit fossil senator in Dianne Feinstein, who like McConnell has milked her political position for millions in filthy lucre thanks to business connections with China. Feinstein shouldn’t have run for reelection in 2018 and is now physically unfit to serve in the Senate.

What’s worse about McConnell, though, is that for some reason the Senate GOP caucus apparently still thinks a semi-catatonic 80-something prone to injury from falls on hotel carpets and inexplicable apparent mini-strokes in the middle of press avails is capable of leading it.

Perhaps it would be messy for the caucus to remove him as its leader. At what point is that less messy than the degenerating status quo?

In a radio interview Wednesday which touched on The Revivalist Manifesto, the book I wrote last year, I noted that the American revival we so desperately need will not happen until the Republican Party becomes capable of leading it.

And the fact that McConnell, brain-freezes and all, is still its leader in the Senate is hard evidence that the GOP at its top levels is nowhere near that point.