Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), often the most powerful man on Capitol Hill, shot back at the Republican National Committee for its voice-vote censure of Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City last weekend.
Cheney and Kinzinger are the sole Republicans on the House of Representatives Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
“The issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different views than the majority,” McConnell said Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. “That’s not the job of the RNC.”
McConnell, who said he still has confidence in RNC chairperson Ronna McDaniel, isn’t exactly escalating his cold war with ex-President Donald J. Trump, but he is keeping a lane open for “traditional” Republicans as this year’s midterm primaries, and the November final elections, play out. …
Speaking of the ever-widening rift between McConnell and Trump, the minority leader laughed off the ex-pres’ derogatory nickname for him, “Old Crow,” in an interview with the Washington Examiner, according to The Hill. “Old Crow? That’s my favorite bourbon.”
It’s worth a reminder here that Trump does not drink. …
Conversely, erstwhile Republican “moderate” and president wannabee Nikki Haley is siding with ex-President Trump again, following ex-Vice President Mike Pence’s defense of his actions in certifying the Electoral College vote for Joe Biden on January 6, 2021, as MAGA-hatted insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, in a speech last weekend before the Federalist Society in Florida.
“I think he did what he thought was right,” Haley, Trump’s UN ambassador and Republican governor of South Carolina before that, said about Pence’s speech in a Fox News interview, according to Yahoo!News. “But I will always say … I’m not a fan of Republicans going against Republicans because the only ones who win when that happens are Democrats and the media.” …
This recalls, of course, President Reagan’s 11th Commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” While Haley might think this applies to Pence, and perhaps McConnell for that matter, we can’t recall any direct application of this amendment – by Haley or any of her wing of the GOP at least – to Trump, up to and including rhetoric leading to January 6 insurrectionists’ calls to “hang Mike Pence.” Yes, the media are making a big thing of that. …
Across the pond … Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, who has recently had to apologize for parties held at Downing Street in violation of his own government’s protocols, now has another matter to deal with. This lead paragraph from The Washington Post story by Adela Suliman simply must be quoted in full:
“LONDON — British lawmakers from Boris Johnson’s ruling Conservative Party are demanding that he apologize and withdraw false claims about the leader of the opposition Labour Party, which appeared to stir up protesters who mobbed his political rival Monday night.”
Let’s break this down:
1. Members of the party he is part of
2. Demanding that he do something
3. That something is to apologize for saying in Parliament last week that Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, didn’t prosecute a British TV personality, Jimmy Savile, who has been revealed as a child abuser—and Starmer was not involved in the decision not to prosecute
4. That something also includes withdrawing the “false claims”
Make no mistake that British politicians at all levels are, in some cases, as bizarre as their American cousins.
But full marks to those in the Conservative Party who have the guts to stand up to their leader, who has done something wrong, and to call him out on it rather than either pretending it didn’t happen or try to spin it as something that it isn’t.
If only their American cousins understood there are things like honesty and reality.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods
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