Destroy the Village to Save It

TPM picks up the latest evidence that Mitch McConnell is making the fatal error of thinking President-Elect Obama is stupid.

Republicans roll out new plan to revive the economy by destroying Social Security ...

Mr. Obama has told Republicans he is open to suggestions, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said his conference would urge Mr. Obama to consider a two-year suspension of payroll taxes to benefit individuals and corporations.

Mr. McConnell said Senate Republicans were intensely interested in the idea, which was presented at their own weekly lunch by Lawrence B. Lindsey, who was President Bush's top economic adviser from 2001 to 2002, and John H. Makin, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

If Mitch McConnell and the rest of the repugs had to choose between destroying terrorism and destroying the New Deal, they'd pick the latter in a heartbeat.

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Losing Your Job? Thank Mitch McConnell

(UPDATE, 6:21 a.m.:Countdown has the incriminating memo.)

Let it be carved in stone in a prominent political spot that when the fate of the nation's economy lay in the hands of Senator Mitchell McConnell, he stood before Congress and told Kentucky's 82,000 auto workers and their families to fuck off and die.

Let it be written, also, that he did it not out of principle, not out of a belief that killing the auto industry would help the economy in the long term, not even out of personal animus against Kentuckians who each work harder every day than little mitchie has worked in his entire worthless life.

No, he did it because he'd rather bring on another Great Depression than miss an opportunity to destroy America's unions.

Kevin Drum identifies the idiocy of Senate republicans scuttling an economy-saving bill over a meaningless 18 months.

(More after the jump.)

Apparently Democrats and the UAW had agreed to deep wage cuts and work rule changes, but it still wasn't enough:

The automakers would [] have been required to cut wages and benefits to match the average hourly wage and benefits of Nissan, Toyota and Honda employees based in the United States, and the companies would have to impose equivalent work rules.
It was over this proposal that the talks ultimately deadlocked with Republicans demanding that the automakers meet that goal by a certain date in 2009 and Democrats and the union urging that the deadline wait until 2011 when the U.A.W. contract expires.

This is nuts. If you're just flatly against the bailout, fine. Vote against it. But if the wage cuts, along with the debt-for-equity swap that was also part of the bill, were enough to bring you around, why would you cavil at the cuts happening in 2011 instead of the end of 2009? It's only about an 18 month difference, and cutting wages makes a lot more sense in 2011 than it does in the middle of a massive recession anyway.

Another shining moment in the history of the modern GOP. Ideology uber alles.

Precisely. Repugs don't care about preventing a depression, or improving the U.S. auto industry, or even shrinking big government. They care about three things:

1. Destroying the only means ordinary Americans have of achieving decent wages and benefits: unions,
2. Ass-fucking the Democrats every chance they get, and
3. Making it impossible for President Obama to fix the catastrophe Smirky/Darth and Mitchie created.

Republicans have been trying to eliminate unions from the U.S. economy for more than 70 years, ever since FDR legalized collective bargaining. It's no secret why: unions are the only thing standing between corporations and the feudal economy of slave labor they enjoyed a century ago.

Unions are the only reason we have an 8-hour workday, a five-day workweek, workplace conditions that are slightly less than lethal, bans on child labor, wages that permit workers to put food on the table and benefits that allow a decent family life.

All of those union achievements are anathema to corporations and their republican lackeys. So, as the Nation documents, they are more than willing to sacrifice the heart of American manufacturing on the altar of anti-unionism.

Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University, notes that one of the ugliest aspects of the continued debate over the Big Three has been a virulent, thinly cloaked antiworker narrative.

Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson recently wrote that a GM bankruptcy could serve as a reminder to all of the "social costs of...overpriced unionized labor." He and other finger-wagging pundits, politicians and free-market adherents have blamed unionized workers (with their solid wages and benefits) for their complicity in the crisis GM is facing.

These arguments falsely vilify working people and stem from a superficial understanding of the modern automotive industry. Historically, the auto industry has provided good middle-class jobs that have come with high wages, impressive healthcare and pension benefits packages, disability and overtime pay--the kinds of jobs that are in too short supply in today's economy.

But in recent decades, much of GM's manufacturing has been moved to nonunion parts plants in the South, allowing the company to drive down labor costs by avoiding United Auto Workers strongholds in the industrial Midwest. This, coupled with last year's agreement by the UAW to swallow concessions on a two-tiered pay scale, has dramatically lowered labor costs for GM. The UAW has also agreed to take over retiree health costs in 2010. These concessions--opposed by many union members for creating a divided workforce--have allowed GM to close the labor cost gap significantly with foreign manufacturers like Toyota. Analysts estimate that the 2007 agreement has saved GM $500 million in labor costs since its signing, and the company is set to save $4 billion annually starting in 2010.

The more unions make wage and benefit concessions in an understanding that by helping the companies they are saving themselves, the more republicans attack them for being "anti-business."

And the more frantic they are now to destroy the unions before January 20, because President-elect Obama is the most pro-union president since FDR.

In the Nation, John Nichols explains why:

Before there was talk of a "transformational presidency," Barack Obama needed a transformational moment. It came in February at a sprawling General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, where the Illinois senator--trailed by a press corps skeptical about his ability to appeal to white union members--electrified thousands of autoworkers with a populist promise of infrastructure investment, new trade policies and a future for American manufacturing.

His pre-Wisconsin primary vow to defend auto plants offered a lifeline to workers who knew that their industry--battered by years of bad CEO decisions, shortsighted federal energy policies and dysfunctional trade deals--was teetering on the brink of the disaster that unfolded as the year progressed. Days after Obama spoke to them, the autoworkers of Janesville voted in overwhelming numbers to make him the Democratic presidential nominee. It was a critical moment for the candidate, one that he would refer to repeatedly as the campaign progressed toward the November 4 election. Obama and his aides, taking counsel from Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, had picked the right room in the house of labor in which to make their move.

Seventy-three years earlier, United Auto Workers Federal Labor Union No. 19324 met near the plant where Obama spoke, forming a piece of the quilt of local unions that would become the nation's most powerful industrial organization. Today Janesville's UAW members, like their more than 1 million brothers and sisters nationwide, are members of a union that has for decades pushed the labor movement, the Democratic Party and the government to cross lines of racial and regional division in pursuit of social justice, sound yet humane economic principles and international solidarity

It was the UAW that fought for national healthcare and pensions and, when those policy initiatives were blocked by reactionary Congresses, forced corporate America to create a social safety net for workers and retirees that would form the model for union and nonunion workplaces across the country.

It was the UAW that fought government- and corporate-sanctioned racial discrimination, integrating Southern factories, supporting the 1963 March on Washington and bailing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. out of jail in Alabama.

It was the UAW that withdrew from the AFL-CIO in the 1960s and '70s rather than take labor's big right turn; the UAW that opposed the Vietnam War; set up a research department that studied the cost of bloated military budgets to domestic progress; opposed apartheid in South Africa with such passion that when Nelson Mandela toured the United States after his release from prison, he insisted on celebrating with Dearborn's UAW Local 600.

And it was the UAW that, three decades ago, scored Detroit for failing to design and produce small fuel-efficient vehicles as a response to rising oil prices and mounting foreign competition.

To a far greater extent than the auto companies, parts suppliers and distribution networks it has organized, the UAW has stood on the side of progress--never perfectly, as union dissidents have noted over the years, but invariably with an eye to providing economic security for working families and a future for communities in every region of the country that are threatened by a severe global economic crisis.

Remarkably, however, it is the UAW that is under attack. Despite the union's sweeping, some argue draconian, concessions to keep the auto giants competitive--lowering company costs to such an extent that a vehicle produced in a UAW plant is now competitive with one produced in a nonunion one--a primary argument for delaying a federal bailout of the auto giants is the union.

SNIP

The strategy of bankrupting the Big Three to break the UAW will not merely destabilize the auto industry. It will tear the heart out of a bulwark of industrial unionism and weaken a labor movement that economic royalists have attacked for decades as part of a broad campaign to weaken social and economic gains in every region of the United States.

Anyone who think that breaking the UAW will only weaken the circumstances of autoworkers is missing the point of the royalist enterprise, which is to weaken the ability of all American workers to demand fair pay and benefits. As such, almost any bailout would be better than bankruptcy, but the best bailout is one that--perhaps by giving the UAW a piece of the action and placing union representatives on corporate boards, perhaps by giving states a stake--strengthens the hand of the one player in the auto industry that is committed to assuring that federal dollars are spent to defend the interests of workers and retirees while modernizing an industry Obama calls "the backbone of American manufacturing."

Tell ya what, Mitchie: If you survive one 40-hour week on the assembly line at the Corvette plant in Bowling Green, and live for one week on the salary of even the highest-paid worker on that line, then you can say whatever you want about unionized workers.

Until and unless you can do that, shut your fucking piehole.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ...

There's more: "Losing Your Job? Thank Mitch McConnell" >>

Mitch on Tape: I'm Bush's Strongest Supporter

John McCain should thank his lucky stars every day that Jim Pence is too busy nailing Mitch McConnell to turn his full attention to Senator Depends.



h/t Barefoot and Progressive.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

There's more: "Mitch on Tape: I'm Bush's Strongest Supporter" >>

Messaging While the Campaign Burns

OK, who put Democratic Common Sense Powder on Ben Chandler's oatmeal?

Buried at the bottom of a thumb-sucker column by Ryan Alessi claiming that Kentucky Democratic candidates can't win in a Democratic landslide year unless they find some kind of unspecified "message," we find this:

Chandler said the message for all Democrats running for Congress should be as simple as ”Time for a change“ — just like Lunsford has started to say, and just like the line Republican Ernie Fletcher used in 2003 to defeat Chandler in the governor's race.

”It's so basic,“ Chandler said. ”That's what the Democrats did in the 2006 election — they just talked about change and a new direction and they didn't really say much about anything else.“

What Ben Chandler forgot during that losing 2003 race for Governor, but has learned recently, is that Democratic candidates who stand up proudly for Democratic values (John Yarmuth) win elections, and those who follow republicans, chirping "me, too!" (Harold Ford) lose.

Unfortunately, we still have political writers like Alessi and the NYT's Matt Bai nattering on about how Democrats, in a year when people would rather chew off their own arms than vote for a republican, can't win unless they "develop a message and stick to it."

There's a good chance that all the Democratic Congressional challengers in Kentucky will lose this year, given that they are all down double-digits in the polls and out-financed by a factor of 10 - but if they do lose, it won't be because they don't have a "message."

The only message Democratic candidates - in Kentucky or anywhere - need this year is this one:

"I'm not the republican."

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

There's more: "Messaging While the Campaign Burns" >>

Kentucky Victim of Terrorism to be Deported

It's no surprise that the maladministration that thought the best way to find terrorists hiding in Pakistan was to attack Iraq also has trouble distinguishing victims from perpetrators.

But that ludicrous incompetence has become a matter of life and death for a student at Lexington's Transylvania University.

As Page One Kentucky neatly put it:

Sudanese scholar and refugee Lino Nakwa just had his green card application denied because he was kidnapped by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army when he was 12-years-old, the very reason he was granted entry to the United States of America as a victim of persecution. Because Nakwa was held captive against his will for one month by the Sudanese terrorist organization, the Department of Homeland Security has decided Nakwa poses a security threat.

Sound preposterous that Lino, a Dean’s List student at Transylvania University trying to make everything right with the world would be carelessly tossed aside?

Click here to learn more about Lino Nakwa and contact your legislators to urge their support of one of the few immigrants in the U.S. who follow the legal route to citizenship only to be castigated by the system.

Don’t sit idly by while the United States allows another person to die in genocidal Sudan. Which is what will happen if Lino is deported. It’s sad enough that we’ve (the world, not just the USA) allowed hundreds of thousands of others to perish.

On Wednesday, Transy students set up a phone bank on campus, providing cell phones for people to call Senator Mitch McConnell, R-KY, and Lexington Congressman Ben Chandler, D-KY6 and urge them to save Nakwa.


Nakwa hugs a fellow student at Wednesday's phone-a-thon.


As Transylvania President Charles L. Shearer wrote in a letter supporting Nakwa:

“Lino’s story is compelling, his resilience as a survivor is deeply touching, and his belief against all odds that there can be a better future brings hope that the American Dream is still possible.”

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

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"Race" to Unseat Mitch McConnell Too Tragic for Farce, Too Ludicrous for Tragedy

UPDATE Below

If Kentucky Democrats had written a specific plan of action to ensure that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell would win re-election this year despite even the most complete Democratic tsunami that swept every other republican from office, it would look pretty much exactly like the clusterfuck we've got right now.

1. Discourage, intimidate, bribe or blackmail every well-known and well-liked Democratic official in the state from entering the Senate race.
2. Encourage half-a-dozen losers, no-hopers, perennial candidates, clueless novices and who-dats to file for the race.
3. Persuade the single most reviled politician in the state to run for the Democratic nomination, although he is a long-time donor to republicans and BFF to Mitch himself.
4. When a strong, viable, uncontrolled candidate emerges, enlist national power-brokers to help force him to drop out.
5. Plant multiple stories on both progressive and wingnut state political blogs exaggerating the BFF's personal fortune and statewide popularity.
6. Spread rumors emphasizing the naivete, incompetence and general lameness of the six also-rans.

So here we are. Not a single Democratic office-holder, past or present, is running for Mitch's seat. Six of the eight candidates are unknowns, perennial losers or cruel jokes. Marine Lt. Col. Andrew Horne dropped out under pressure from Governor Beshear and DSCC chair Chuck Schumer.

And Bruce Lunsford - Criminal, Democratic Traitor, $40,000+ Donor to Republicans, and Best Friend Forever to Mitch McConnell - is, six weeks before the primary, the presumptive democratic nominee to challenge McConnell.

It is a tribute to the utter through-the-looking-glass nature of the Democratic clusterfuck that it is necessary to debunk the propaganda that Lunsford is a viable candidate.

Bruce has spent the last five years piling up such a record of supporting republicans and attacking democrats that Mitch won't have to film a single ad against him; he'll just rerun clips from Bruce's previous campaigns.

If Mitch wins by less than 20 points, it'll be because Democrats finally remembered how to try to rig an election.

Page One Kentucky's posts on Lunsford's inevitable win in the primary and loss in the general.

Page One Kentucky's posts on Greg Fischer's lame campaign and missed opportunities.

BlueGrassRoots' posts on why Greg Fischer is a better choice than Lunsford.

UPDATE, 7:27 p.m.: Meanwhile, the national Senate electoral picture is shaping up as a rout for Democrats, who have recruited strong challengers just about everywhere. Everywhere except here. Memo to the Kentucky Democratic Party: next time New Yorker Schumer comes calling, beware Yankees bearing empty promises.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

There's more: ""Race" to Unseat Mitch McConnell Too Tragic for Farce, Too Ludicrous for Tragedy" >>

Mitch Wins

UPDATE Below

It's over. Nobody seems to know what happened, though we've all got our ideas. Each one more depressing than the last.

Dear Friend,

I'm writing you today with some disappointing news. This afternoon I informed Governor Steve Beshear of my decision to withdraw from the United States Senate race.

This decision was difficult for many reasons, not least because of the major challenges facing our Commonwealth and Country. Millions of Americans live without quality health care, we have shamefully disregarded the needs of our veterans, our education system is deeply flawed, and we remain embroiled in a mismanaged and ill-conceived war. Through it all, Mitch McConnell is more interested in expanding the scope of his own power than using his office to benefit the hardworking families who make our country great.

I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am for everything you have done to support me in this campaign. I won't be the Democrat challenging Mitch McConnell next November, but our work is far from done. We must continue to fight for the values that brought us together. I look forward to working with you for many years to come.

Again, thank you so much.

Sincerely,

Andrew

UPDATE, 5:29 a.m: For an idea of how this decision is already splitting progressives in Kentucky into warring camps, check out the comments at PageOneKentucky and BlueGrassRoots.

There's more: "Mitch Wins" >>

Millionaires Who Hate Democrats and the Democrats Who Love Them

UPDATE Below

Does anybody really believe that Gov. Steve Beshear, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer think that the very best person to represent Kentucky in the U.S. Senate is Bruce Lunsford?

Of course not. I doubt they even think Bruce Lunsford is a Democrat. Or care.

Beshear, Reid and Schumer don't even think Lunsford is the strongest candidate Kentucky Democrats can put up against Mitch McConnell.

But they nevertheless want Lunsford to be the Democratic nominee for Mitch McConnell's Senate seat. Why?

(Answer after the jump.)


Because Lunsford has the most money.

Here's the really stupid part: Twice in the last five years, Bruce Lunsford has spent millions of his own money in races for statewide office.

And lost. Lost huge. Both times.

In 2003, he wasted $8 million on negative TV ads, then dropped out when polls showed him still coming in third - if not fourth - in the gubernatorial primary. Lunsford then added insult to injuries he inflicted on the Democratic nominee by endorsing the republican, who went on to win in November.

In the 2007 gubernatorial primary, Lunsford was touted as the only hope for poor Democrats up against a well-funded republican incumbent. He spent more millions, and still lost to Steve Beshear by 20 points.

That's quite a record of humiliating failure. Perhaps if Lunsford were a loyal, dedicated Democrat who had contributed tens of thousands of dollars to worthy Democratic candidates over the years, he might even deserve a third chance.

Lunsford, however, has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to republicans. He has proudly advertised his close, personal relationship to republicans like Ernie Fletcher, Anne Northup and - wait for it - Mitch McConnell.

Two-time loser, multi-millionaire who can't buy a single lousy election, criminal, democratic traitor, Mitch's BFF: this is the person your Democratic "leaders" think should carry the Democratic flag into battle against Mitch McConnell.

I am sick and fucking tired of hearing supposedly sentient Democrats whine about Mitch's $11 million "war chest."

Here's the truth about Mitch's money: It has taken him five years to accumulate $11 million. Five years during most of which he was the third-most powerful politician in the country.

Last year, in just the nine months between February and November, Steve Beshear - a has-been Democrat challenging an incumbent republican in a small, red state - raised$9.5 million. And won.

An unknown, underdog democrat raised 90 percent of what Mitch raised in one-sixth the time.

If a genuinely strong Democratic nominee for Senate can't raise at least $10 million to beat the third-most-hated Republican in the country, then Democrats should just concede the entire 2008 ballot right now.

But of course a genuinely strong Democratic nominee like Andrew Horne will raise much more than Bruce Lunsford is willing to spend on an election he knows he can't win.

An election that - $10 million or no - Andrew Horne can and will win.

UPDATE, 4:15 p.m.: Apparently the pro-Lunsford forces are way more stupider than I thought - they're pushing Bruce even though he claims he will not spend his millions on the race to beat Mitch. Huh? PageOneKentucky has the details.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

There's more: "Millionaires Who Hate Democrats and the Democrats Who Love Them" >>

The Traitor Returns, as a Mitch Protege Drops Out

Today's 4 p.m. deadline for filing to run in 2008 elections in Kentucky arrived with some expected bad news and two surprise gifts for Democrats.

Criminal and Democratic Traitor Bruce Lunsford filed at the last minute to run in the eight-person Democratic primary for Mitch McConnell's U.S. Senate seat.

That had been rumored for weeks, but still came as a blow to those of us who thought Lunsford's 20-point loss in the gubernatorial primary last year effectively killed him as a candidate.

Note to self: Next time, chop the body into tiny pieces and bury it in a pit of lime.

(More after the jump.)

Lunsford and fellow Republican millionaire Greg Fischer were encouraged to enter the Democratic primary by Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Chuck Schumer and other DLC/republican-lite types in D.C. and Frankfort.

I will have more to say about this intractable suicidal tendency later, but for the moment, just remember this: Lunsford/Fischer = Mitch victory.

But take heart, progressives: One of Mitch's original protege`s has thrown in the towel. Seven-term Congressman Ron Lewis, R-KY 2, is not running for re-election, throwing the 2nd District into real contention for the first time in more than a decade.

Back in February 1994, when Democratic Congressman William Natcher, who had represented the 2nd District of Kentucky for decades, died in office, then-freshman senator Mitch McConnell cast his net for a useful dupe to run as a republican in the special election.

He found itinerant preacher and religious bookstore owner Ron Lewis in tiny Cecilia, and never looked back. In 14 years, Lewis has distinguished himself primarily by doing nothing to draw anyone's attention. In 2006, the last year of the republican majority in the House of Representatives, Lewis' power ranking was below 200 - near the bottom of his party, despite 12 years in office.

As of this morning, only Owensboro representative David Boswell had filed as a Democrat for Lewis' seat, but immediately after Lewis' last-minute withdrawal, another dem and two repugs jumped in.

Another Mitch protege` announced her desire for a third electoral humiliation in 18 months. In the Third Congressional District of Louisville, former Congresswoman Anne Northup has filed to run against Democrat John Yarmuth, who beat every prediction to upset her in November 2006.

In 2007, Annie followed Mitch's advice to challege incumbent Republican governor Ernie Fletcher in the primary, only to lose big again in May.

Now rumors say Annie is very pissed that three other republicans have also filed in the primary. How tacky of them!

In the Fourth, two-term incumbent repug Geoff Davis has three - count 'em, three - republican primary opponents and one Democratic opponent.

In the Sixth, DINO Extraordinaire Ben Chandler has two republican opponents and, to the shame of every Real Democrat in the Sixth District, no Democratic primary opponent.

In the Fifth District, republican Congressman-for-Life Hal Rogers is unopposed. His constituents may all be Democrats, but they know the value of a congressman who will break any law to bring billions in pork to the home folks.

It's going to be one hell of a ride between now and the Primary on May 20. Check back here for updates as frequent as I can manage to make them.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

There's more: "The Traitor Returns, as a Mitch Protege Drops Out" >>

Crybaby Mitch

A couple of weeks ago, Steve Benen at TPM launched a new meme about the tendency of republicans to faint over the least little thing:

In other words, by throwing a fit, Republicans end up looking weak and hysterical. Indeed, it reinforces the least flattering GOP caricature of all -- these guys can't govern, but they can fall onto a fainting couch like nobody's business.

For years, Republicans worked to create the opposite reputation. They're tough. This is the macho "daddy party." They don't care about "political correctness" and wussies who cry over words that rub people the wrong way. This is a crowd that calls it like they see it, and doesn't look bad or apologize.

And yet, they've now spent the better part of a year trembling over mild rebukes from liberals. If Democrats were smart, they'd look at this as an opportunity to rebrand the GOP as pathetic cry-babies who can barely go a week without throwing a hissy fit over one manufactured outrage or another.

Now Media Czech at BlueGrassRoots adds to the meme with evidence of Mitch McConnell's hurt feelings:

Poor little Mitchy. He of the $10 million war chest, fancy black tie dinners fit for a queen, socialist government handout healthcare, and bribes contributions from big foreign arms contractors. Yes, the third most powerful Republican in the country decided to send out another whiny and pathetic fundraising letter today. Once more, Mitch cries about how the badass liberal blogosphere in Kentucky is kicking his ass.

(More after the jump.)


"3. Liberal bloggers have made numerous unfounded allegations against me and spread these distortions across the web with few holding them to account"

Oh, have some dignity you big fucking baby! This is the second time Mitch has acted like a drama queen in distress in his fundraising letters. Earlier this summer, he whined about how Team Ditch Mitch was holding him accountable for his bullshit.

"Liberals on the internet have already created a website called "Ditch Mitch," and 6,000 radicals from across the nation have already signed up."

Mitch, you may have a big war chest, but the truth is free. And we'll be spreading it every damn day until you go down in flames one year from now. Money can't change the fact that your office spread a false smear of a brain damaged 12-yr old boy and his family to reporters, and then you blatantly LIED about this on camera. Money can't change the fact that you have blocked the expansion of SCHIP and student loans. Money can't change the fact that you have stood by and rubberstamped Bush's horribly disastrous policy in Iraq.

And as you can see in recent polls, Kentuckians are onto you and your days are numbered.

And Mitch, you may be scared to death of us, but please, for your own sake, try to show a little more dignity in public. Voters don't like a whiny drama queen.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

There's more: "Crybaby Mitch" >>

Mitch McConnell Sinking Almost as Fast as Ernie

BlueGrass Roots has the latest beat-down on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY.

A new SurveyUSA poll shows that Mitch McConnell's approval ratings have plummeted 8 points over the last month to an all-time low of 45%.

And it won't get any easier for Mitch, as MoveOn is backing this news up with a Huge ad buy right here in KY.

The poll's breakdown of voters is even worse than that.

Mitch fails to gain more than 50 percent approval among either sex, any race, any age group, any generation, or any geographical area. The only two groups who give him an approval rating above 50 percent are conservatives and republicans.

Mitch may have $9 million in the bank, but unless he's going to use it to literally buy Kentucky voters one at a time between now and November 2008, it's not going to do him much good.

Get on the Ditch Mitch bandwagon now!

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

There's more: "Mitch McConnell Sinking Almost as Fast as Ernie" >>

Mitch McConnell Stands In The Way Of Financing Disclosure Reform

The Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act - S.223 is a really simple bill requiring Senatorial candidates to file campaign finance reports in electronic form just like Presidential candidates and candidates for the House. Currently Senate reports are filed on paper via snail mail which seriously slows their availability to the press and other candidates. Sponsored by Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis) the bill has 40 co-sponsors and is a sure thing if it ever gets a vote.

Introduced in January the bill has been languishing under one of those secret holds for which the Senate is famous. As minority leader Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been hiding the identity of the Senator who has been blocking the bill. According to the Congress Gossip Blog, on Monday "Senator John Ensign (R-NV) came forward and identified himself as the senator who's been anonymously blocking passage." That solves one of life's little mysteries, right?

The answer after the break.

Not so fast, the Sunshine Foundation did a little additional digging and discovered that the culprit Mitch McConnell has been hiding is none other than Mitch McConnell. According to the Foundation,

Sunlight has learned that last week Democratic offices were given a Unanimous Consent agreement that would have allowed the Senate to move to S. 223 only if they agreed to take up a an amendment identical to the one introduced on Monday by Senator John Ensign. The consent agreement came from none other than the offices of Sen. Mitch McConnell, whom the Sunlight Foundation has targeted as a culprit in covering up the identity of the anonymous Senators previously blocking the bill. That the “McConnell amendment” is now being offered by Senator Ensign comes as no surprise to long time McConnell watchers, who are well aware that when it comes to reform, McConnell is often hiding behind the scenes, pulling all the strings.

The fact that McConnell's seat isn't safe doesn't have anything to do with his underhanded efforts to block the reform, does it?

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