It's hard to remember another legislative leader who got his ass kicked as badly as Mitch McConnell got his ass kicked around the Capitol over the past week or so. On Tuesday, his attempts to amend the USA Freedom Act, the milquetoast bipartisan surveillance reform bill, went down like a generation of British heavyweights. This was the final shot below the waterline for McConnell's Senate leadership. From now on, he has the big office only at the sufferance of people like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.

Don't let it be said that Mitch didn't go down whining.

But McConnell painted the vote as one that would "take one more tool away from those who defend this country every single day." He slammed the bill in a speech on the Senate floor before the vote on Tuesday, but only went after President Barack Obama in his criticism, leaving out Senate and House Republicans who supported and led reform efforts. "This bill is part of a pattern going back to the time the President took office to pull back," McConnell said. "This is a step in the wrong direction."

The bill is now on the president's desk because the leadership in the monkeyhouse on the other side of the Capitol wanted it there, unamended, and because McConnell's caucus told him to soak his head and joined the Democrats in crushing any of McConnell's attempts to soften the bill even more than it is. (As always, we subcontract the deep analysis to Marcy Wheeler.) It's at least a minor triumph that the post-9/11 One Percent Doctrine consensus might be cracking a little at its foundations. I'm not sure about how permanent the cracks are. The Republicans are going to give us an entirely hawkish presidential campaign, with only Aqua Buddha trying to maintain his libertarian bona fides while stepping gingerly around The Base. Worse, of course, would be the perception that this bill is enough, or that the excesses of the surveillance state have been restrained. This is a very small first step, albeit one that landed squarely on Mitch McConnell's head.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io