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**FEBRUARY 29, 2024**
On the Prospect website
Larry Hogan's Maryland Senate Campaign Just Got Harder
The wildly popular former governor just ran headlong into the
politics of national reproductive rights. BY GABRIELLE GURLEY
[link removed]
The Gun Death Cult Takes On the Administrative State
The conservative movement is outraged that Donald Trump did too much
in response to the Las Vegas mass shooting. BY RYAN COOPER
[link removed]
Ken Cuccinelli and the Persuasive, Pervasive Politics of Cruelty
The conservative movement has convinced its members to become the
worst versions of themselves. BY CHRIS LEWIS
Cooper on TAP
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**** Mitch McConnell, Senate Arsonist
The longtime leader of Senate Republicans did more damage to his elected
body than anyone in history.
Sen. Mitch McConnell announced this week he is stepping down as Senate
majority leader. In liberal circles, McConnell is often portrayed as a
cynical Machiavellian schemer, with some justice. But in the history
books-if there are any such things in a future United States of
Trump-McConnell will be remembered as the man who wrecked the
functionality and power of the Senate more than any other senator in
American history.
First, McConnell was the driving force behind turning the Senate
filibuster from an occasional mechanism mainly used to bottle up civil
rights legislation into a requirement for almost every bill passed
through regular order, which only dates back to about 2007
. This means not only that
senators representing as little as about 11 percent of the population
can block ordinary bills, but it also has greatly damaged the basic
process of legislation. Because nothing can be passed normally, a whole
year or two's worth of vital priorities tend to get jammed into
3,000-page super-bills negotiated and passed at the last second. It's
an absurd way to legislate, and it has all but ended the traditional
Senate career. Being a senator today largely consists of automatically
voting the party line on these bills and on nominees to various
agencies.
Second, McConnell's most passionate priority of his career has been
"enclosure of our public life by money," as Alex Pareene writes
.
For decades, he has worked diligently to roll back and eventually
destroy as many restrictions on the use of private money in politics as
possible. This enabled his own fundraising, but it also meant power
flowed from the Senate to the billionaire class, many of whom are
Newsmax-addled cranks who prop up nutty GOP Senate candidates that lose
winnable elections
.
Meanwhile, the fact that political parties are still relatively
restrained in their fundraising means leaders like McConnell have few
ways to discipline their lunatic fringe.
[link removed]
Third, McConnell's second-most passionate priority has been stuffing
the judiciary full of Federalist Society goons whose legal views begin
and end with "laws passed by Democrats are unconstitutional." Most
notably, he broke all precedent and violated the Constitution by
refusing to hold so much as a hearing for President Obama's nominee to
replace Justice Antonin Scalia. McConnell was rewarded by Trump
rubber-stamping hundreds of exactly the kind of nominee McConnell loves,
including three Supreme Court justices.
But the effect of this has been an imperialist judiciary steadily
arrogating the powers of Congress to itself. Right now, there is a case
that would overturn the Chevron doctrine
,
which holds that judges should defer to agencies in cases where
statutory language is unclear. If the Supreme Court rules as expected,
this will destroy the administrative state as we've known it for a
century, and eviscerate the power of Congress in the process.
Instead of representatives and senators writing laws that instruct the
executive branch about how and what kind of things to regulate (food,
water, pollution, air travel, and so on) random judges will do it in
concert with their oligarch pals. Right-wing billionaires will fund
thousands of lawsuits against whatever regulations they don't like,
and-in between the same billionaires and members of the judiciary
enjoying some ultra-luxurious vacations together
-right-wing judges will rule
in their favor. And thanks in part to how McConnell has gummed up the
gears of Congress, it is all but helpless to respond to this assault on
democracy.
The Constitution is supposed to create a separation of powers because,
the framers assumed, any member of an institution would surely seek to
protect and expand the powers of that institution. "Ambition must be
made to counteract ambition," says Federalist No. 51
.
But they didn't anticipate Mitch McConnell, a man willing to get
elected to the Senate to destroy it and set up judicial tyranny ten
times worse than that of King George III.
~ RYAN COOPER
**Follow Ryan Cooper on Twitter**
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