

I just love this statement from Senator Mitch McConnell to Republico ...er...Politico:

Indeed, McConnell is signaling that the White House should be prepared in the new Congress to support Republican policies – not the other way around. "If the president is willing to do things that we believe in, I don’t think we’re going to say, ‘No, Mr. President we’re not going to do this any longer because you’re now with us,’” McConnell told POLITICO in his ornate office across from the old Senate chamber. “Any time the president is willing to do what we think is in the best interest of the American people, we have something to talk about."

So let's see if I have this right. McConnell is saying that as long as the president does Republican things, they're down with it. Except President Obama has done Republican things and they're not down with it. Take the DREAM Act, for example. It was one of those Republican co-sponsored things. A bill where Republicans not only voted for it, but signed on as sponsors. And yet, it failed. Yes, it failed partially because of Democrats, but also because of Republicans who do Republican things. Like Orrin Hatch, for example, who was an original co-sponsor.

The individual mandate in the health care act? Republican thing. Where was McConnell? That's right. Not doing Republican things.

Original START treaty? Republican thing.

So really, let's just be real. McConnell just spewed a whole bunch of words that sound all tough and full of high-riding hubris, but they mean nothing. Fortunately, some Democrats get that.

To Democrats, McConnell’s comments confirm their suspicions: that his motivations are rooted first and foremost in politics on his desire to beat their party no matter the price. After McConnell’s comments last month that his top political goal was to make Obama a one-term president, frustrated Senate Democrats said in private meetings that their party needed to take a harder line against Republicans to counter the GOP leader. “If McConnell is going to operate that his major first political goal is to make Obama a one-termer, I don’t know how the Senate operates well,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

It's sad to me that McConnell views the death of the appropriations bill as a big win. As a Champion Porker himself, he managed to convince Senate Republicans to stand tall against...Republican Things.

But Democrats saw pure hypocrisy in McConnell’s stance, given the $113 million in pet projects that appropriators included at his request. “It was really rich for Mitch McConnell to say that somehow that this was a Democratic plot that had been somehow hatched in a backroom, and they were standing up to stop it,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said. “It really just was that a bunch of them thought they could have it both ways, and at the 11th hour, they thought that they couldn’t.” Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), a senior appropriator who has served with McConnell for 23 years, said she was “very bitter” that Republicans threw “us under the bus when we actually went for the mark that Sen. McConnell himself wants.” Asked what her impressions of the Republican leaders were, Mikulski said: “I don’t know them anymore. … I’m really frustrated with this kind of temper tantrum politics that we have going on here.”

Temper tantrum politics. Perfect. Another Republican Thing.