Here are some notable quotes:
Despite doing just the opposite this past week, in 2013 O’Connell said, “Breaking the rules to change the rules is un-American. I just hope the majority leader thinks about his legacy, the future of his party, and, most importantly, the future of our country before he acts.”
“I am a proud guardian of gridlock. I think gridlock is making a big comeback in the country.”
“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
“We have a new president with an approval rating in the 70 percent area. We do not take him on frontally. We find issues where we can win, and we begin to take him down, one issue at a time. We create an inventory of losses, so it’s Obama lost on this, Obama lost on that.”
He is an obstructionist, “a master manipulator and strategist.”
"No man has done more in recent years to undermine the functioning of U.S. government than Mitch McConnell,” says Robert Reich. “For example:
1. As Majority Leader of the Senate, McConnell famously declared in 2010: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
2. By 2013, McConnell had led filibusters of 79 of Obama’s court nominees, compared with 68 in the entire previous history of the Republic.
3. After Justice Antonin Scalia’s death was confirmed last year, it took McConnell less than an hour to say that the vacancy should be filled by the next president. He called keeping Obama’s nominee off the court “one of my proudest moments.”
4. Although his predecessors as majority leaders at least attempted collegiality, McConnell practices no such niceties (recall his recent silencing of Senator Elizabeth Warren).
5.Now comes his use of the "nuclear option," ending the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees, killing the tradition of unlimited debate in the Senate dating back to 1789.
“Two years ago, when Obama was president, McConnell said he would abolish filibusters of Supreme Court justices only if there were 67 votes for such a change. This week, he employed a maneuver to do it with 51 votes.
“McConnell has consistently placed party over country. He is no patriot. He has shamed himself, the Republican Party, and America.”
By Dana Milbank
