There was on Wednesday one of those moments in Mitch McConnell's guardianship of the United States Senate when the least excusable man in government decides, what the hell, I'll just say what everybody knows anyway. It has been conservative Republican political strategy since the mid-1970s to suppress the votes of the classes of voters to which conservatism declines to appeal. This had the added benefit of rolling back the hard-won achievements of the civil-rights movement, an episode in history that modern conservative Republicanism came to consider an aberration to the natural order of things.

On Wednesday, while the Senate was debating a House bill aimed at making voting easier, as well as rolling back Republican voter-suppression laws, Mitch was particularly exercised over a proposal to make federal election day a national holiday. From the Washington Post:

In remarks on the Senate floor, McConnell, R-Ky., said Democrats "want taxpayers on the hook for generous new benefits for federal bureaucrats and government employees," including making Election Day a "new paid holiday for government workers."

"So this is the Democrats' plan to 'restore democracy,'" McConnell said, describing the legislation as "a political power grab that's smelling more and more like what it is."

Giving more people a better chance to vote is a "power grab." This is so deeply perverted—nay, un-American—that it seems like it might even be beneath even McConnell's obviously low opinion of the common sense of the American voter.

Is it surprising? Of course, not. Those rats cannot fck themselves.

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

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