With Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pushed to his breaking point by the trending Twitter hashtag #MoscowMitch — a sobriquet that he has earned by refusing to allow any of the multiple bipartisan election security bills designed to deter further Russian interference in our electoral process from coming up for a vote in the Senate — the Majority Leader lashed out at his critics today.
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The man who has embraced the reputation as the Senate’s “Grim Reaper” — the force behind the death of any sensible bill that comes before him — accused his critics of “modern-day McCarthyism” after the allegations that he was acting like a Russian asset with his refusal to stand up for electoral integrity.
Modern-day McCarthyism is poison for American democracy. It is shameful to imply that policy disagreements make the other side unpatriotic. The people who push such unhinged smears are doing Putin’s destabilizing work for him.
— Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) July 29, 2019
McConnell’s critics could point to more than just his suppression of election security bills as evidence of his own brand of Russian collusion.
The Majority Leader’s advocacy of the lifting of sanctions on Russian oligarch and Putin ally Oleg Deripaska and the subsequent announcement that a company owned by Deripaska would be investing millions in a new aluminum plant in McConnell’s home state of Kentucky has been just as incriminating for the Senator.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has been a victim of Donald Trump’s own brand of authentic McCarthyism — learned at the feet of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel Roy Cohn who was later Trump’s personal attorney — with attacks on her Democratic Socialist ideals, indistinguishable from communism in Trump’s limited mind.
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Ocasio-Cortez saw Senator McConnell’s whiny complaints about the legitimate concerns over the direction of his loyalties and decided to set the misguided Majority Leader straight.
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McCarthyism is the practice of baselessly accusing political opponents of being communists as unjust grounds for targeting & harassment.
You are blocking action to protect US elections despite official DoJ pleas. That doesn’t make you a communist. It just makes you a bad leader. https://t.co/qLqR2vtOfI
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 30, 2019
The congresswoman was correct in both her definitions of McCarthyism and the fact that the Senator — who has managed to amass millions in wealth while in office — is far from a communist.
While Ocasio-Cortez’s description of McConnell as a “bad leader” is a much more generous description of the Senator’s pernicious intent than many other progressive observers would allow, her calling out of the Majority Leader’s misleading accusations against his opponents is right on the money.
With his polling at new lows in his home state of Kentucky for next year’s reelection campaign, hopefully, McConnel’s days in the Senate are numbered. Let’s do everything we can to make that a reality.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
