Mitch McConnell in The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell
On Principles & Values:
I only talk to press if it's to my advantage
Over the three decades I have been a US senator, I've been the subject of many profiles. I usually play the villain, according to the standard good guy/bad guy accounts favored by most
Washington reporters. The more positive ones tend to focus on my ability to broker deals with supposed adversaries, keep my head when others don't, win elections I'm not supposed to.
Until now though, no one has tried to write the story on me the way I see it, which is really my doing. I only talk to the press if it's to my advantage, and
I always discourage my staff from revealing details of meetings with presidents and other public figures.
Source: The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell, p.1
May 31, 2016
On Government Reform:
Soft money allows conservatives to respond to liberal media
Under the existing law, as a candidate or member of the existing Republican party, I could use soft money to issue ads to respond to the New York Times, presenting the other side of the issue. To buy the amount of space the
New York Times had used in its 114 editorials on the subject would have cost me $3.5 million . By limiting my soft money, you limit my ability to buy those ads, thus limiting the conversation and allowing the press-the biggest and the best-financed
special interest in America--to control it. This is particularly perilous to conservatives because the large national corporations that own newspapers in America share views that are remarkably similar--meaning overwhelmingly on the political left.
To the extent that conservatives are unable to market their message through the expenditure of money, whether it's hard money or soft money, the agenda will be set and controlled by an institution like the New York Times.
Source: The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell, p.114
May 31, 2016
On War & Peace:
Bush an outstanding war president; kept US safe after 9/11
Despite public opinion in the last days of his presidency, I think George W. Bush was an outstanding wartime president.
But when it comes to war on terror that Bush was forced to confront, the measure of success has to be the level of security here at home.
And Bush's decision to go on the offense, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and to create the programs and policies to combat Al-Qaeda is the number one reason there have been no successful mass casualty attacks on America soil since 9-11.
His strategy didn't always go perfectly, but that can't be expected, because there is no perfection in armed combat. There can't be, because the other guys shoot back.
Source: The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell, p.176-177
May 31, 2016
On Health Care:
ObamaCare: the so-called cure worse than the disease
The proposed Affordable Care Act, which quickly became known as Obama Care, was awful. This so called cure--to overhaul the entire system--was worse than the disease. The cost was staggering, and it was extremely unwise to ask the government to take
this on when it was straining under the healthcare it was already responsible for, Medicare and Medicaid. And few Americans believed that allowing the folks in charge of the IRSD to take over all American's health care, as the Affordable Care
Act set out to do, was a step in the right direction. My goal was clear from the beginning: because this was the worst bill to come across my desk in nearly 3 decades I'd served in the Senate, and because this was not anything like the bill we would
have enacted, I didn't want a single Republican to vote for it. It had to be very obvious to the voters which party was responsible for this terrible bill, and I wanted a clear line of demarcation, they were for this and we were against it.
Source: The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell, p.190-191
May 31, 2016
On Budget & Economy:
Obama's far left agenda led to a mountain of debt
I was not surprised to see the public sour on the President and his plan. It was tremendously short sided. Our four fathers came here not looking for security, but for opportunity, and Obama's blatant attempt to Europeanize the country flies in the
face of what America is all about. By pushing this far left agenda, all the Democrats had done was explode the government, bringing along a coinciding mountain of debt. The deficit for this year alone was bigger than the last four years alone of the
Bush administration. Combined. It reminded me of what Margaret Thatcher once said: The problem with Socialism is you soon will run out of other people money. Policies like this could not be sustained in
the long term and all are doing was leaving a whole lot of problems our children will have to deal with . So were people angry? Yes. And for good reason.
Source: The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell, p.200
May 31, 2016
On Principles & Values:
Wanting Obama to be one-term president taken out of context
I told a reporter on Oct. 23, 2010, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one term president." I then went on to explain that if Obama did what Clinton had done--decide after the elections that he was
willing to move toward the political center and meet Republicans half way on some of the biggest issues facing our nation--we'd do business with him. "I don't want him to fail. I want him to change."Well, I've been taken out of context in the past,
but never more relentlessly. Over the next few months every Democrat reminded people Mitch McConnell said his greatest legislative goal is to make Barack Obama a one term president. People falsely claimed I made the comment immediately after Obama was
elected--framing my statement as proof that before anything else, I was out to obstruct the president and cause him to fail--when the truth was that I made it after he had jammed past the healthcare bill and the stimulus.
Source: The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell, p.202-203
May 31, 2016
On Principles & Values:
Liberalism has contempt not gratitude for the past
Difference is not something to be stamped out. It is something to be confronted and mediated in a way that's broadly acceptable to the public.
And I think we've come a long way. In the end, the goal isn't a perfectly running congressional machine or a party without blemish or inner turmoil.
The goal is for the country to work out it's differences freely and energetically, confident that the institutions the founders left us are capable of confronting the disputes and disagreements that arise in a nation as
big and diverse and open as ours.So much of liberalism seems rooted not in gratitude, but in contempt for the past. It's one of the dividing lines between progressivism on one hand and conservatism on the other.
Source: The Long Game, by Mitch McConnell, p.257
May 31, 2016
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