I’ve been meaning to give praise to Mitch McConnell since last week when he began voting against appropriations measures coming out of the Senate. This is a rare thing for McConnell, who normally sides with the appropriators.

But he stood up and voted no last week, siding with the Senate conservatives. It was a bold move worthy of praise.

Something has happened this week too. McConnell did it again. He sided with Jim DeMint and California farmers against a small fish.

What is pathetic and sad is that both Barbara Boxer and Lamar Alexander sided with the fish over the farmers.

Jim DeMint offered up an amendment to the Department of Interior’s budget appropriations to sidestep stupid environmental studies about a minnow that a judge used to stop water flow in California’s Central Valley, where 50% of the US fruits and veggies are grown.

Senator Feinstein called DeMint’s amendment “a kind of Pearl Harbor.”

California’s Senators would rather their farmers be unemployed and crops left to die of thirst than stop a judge from siding with a minnow. Both Boxer and Feinstein sided with the minnow over the farmers.

Lamar Alexander sided with them.

That’s the funny thing about the United States Senate. Too many senators side with their fellow senators instead of constituents. The fraternity of appropriators in the Senate is a stronger bond than a Senator to his constituents. The people of Tennessee now know where Lamar Alexander’s loyalties lie.

And the people of California know that its Senators would rather save a non-voting fish, than voting, working farmers. Chuck Devore should be able to exploit this one.

Friends, read that headline again. It is worth pointing out that Senator Mitch McConnell has been most excellent on the issue of Sotomayor. And I, given my frequent criticisms of him, want to this out there.

This morning, the NRA is announcing that it is going to score the Sotomayor nomination. This is a great thing. And I have no doubt that while outside groups have applied much pressure, Mitch McConnell leading so effectively on this front was a deciding factor. No group wants to come out and be left hanging by a failure of leadership.

McConnell has mitchslapped the Democrats through this entire process and while I may have qualms about him on several fronts, there is no doubt this morning that he has been extremely effective on this front.

Well done.

There are some calls out there right now to boycott the NRCC over the 8 cap-and-trade votes cast by the GOP.

Are we going to seriously punish Dave Reichert for voting for cap-and-trade when he barely won his district in 2008 and something like 70% of his district both supports cap-and-trade and thinks environmental issues are the most important issues in Congress? If so, don’t delude yourself into ever thinking we’ll get the majority back.

Some Republicans have to vote in ways the majority of us find detestable in order to stay in Congress.

But then there is Bono Mack, Castle, and Kirk. They did not have to vote that way. I am most troubled by Congresswoman Mack and think we should beat both her and her useless husband.

Of note, and one reason I do not think we should do to the NRCC what we are doing to the NRSC (in addition to a boycott of the NRCC totally obscuring exactly why we need to punish the NRSC), even the House GOP leadership quickly threw the eight yes votes under the bus.

When is the last time you have seen the Senate GOP do that?

On Friday night, the House GOP sent out a press release blasting the passage of H.R. 2454 and listed the names of all eight Republicans who voted for it. The Senate GOP would never do that.

Not only that, but John Boehner took to the floor of the House to engage in a quasi-filibuster of the legislation. Please note that those criticizing Boehner for not making it a full filibuster are under the impression that he could have done so. Boeher was speaking with “unlimited” time, which actually meant he was speaking for as long as the Speaker would allow him — a big difference and something he cannot afford to abuse.

Boehner tied up the House for an hour by daring to read the legislation and then the House GOP Leadership sent out a release blasting the eight Republicans who voted for cap-and-trade. I dare Mitch McConnell to be so bold.

McConnell’s typical idea on something like this would be to get an amendment allowing drilling for oil in one square inch of ANWR, then declare compromise a success and vote for the thing. Hopefully, in this battle, he will be a fighter not a squish. He should remember what John Boehner did both before and after the vote, then act the same way.

One must wonder what Mitch McConnell paid or did to have the Washington Post’s Perry Bacon, Jr. write this total fluff piece on Mitch McConnell.

When he was fighting campaign finance reform a decade ago,  Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was dubbed Darth Vader by his critics. He embraced the nickname, even announcing “Darth Vader has arrived” at a news conference.

Well, when the article starts out with a gross distortion of the facts, we can only conclude that McConnell is desperate to hang on to power and distract from his failures as the Senate Republican Leader.

What gross distortion?

“Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was dubbed Darth Vader by his critics,” writes Perry Bacon, Jr. today.

“The Kentucky curmudgeon who dubbed himself the Darth Vader of campaign-finance reform is whipped, and he knows it,” wrote Jonathan Alter in Newsweek on April 9, 2001.

“Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who aptly describes himself as the “Darth Vader” of the campaign finance debate,” wrote the Kansas City Star on April 8, 2001.

“The antipathy is well known between Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the self-described Darth Vader of campaign finance reform, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who recently likened his presidential campaign to the adventures of Luke Skywalker,” wrote Mary Lynn Jones in the Hill on February 16, 2000.

Yes, Common Cause gave Mitch McConnell the designation once, but it says more about McConnell that he had to embrace and recycle the nickname for anyone to pick it up and use it “against” him.

Now Perry Bacon, Jr. in his fluff piece, recycles it to make McConnell seem more than the limp wristed leader he has been lately.

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Last fall, our nation’s leaders faced a choice. They could embrace a flawed, ill-conceived and, essentially, desperate plan to try to rescue our financial system and the economy – or they could stand on principle against an interventionist government and the risk of seriously undermining our capitalistic system.

Some Republicans panicked – notably, every member of Senate Republican “leadership” – and as a result, we are neck deep in government mandates, controls, ownership, and just general meddling.

A handful of Republicans did the right thing in the face of the indecipherable blustering of Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke, something we might refer to as ACTUAL leadership. Members such as Shelby and DeMint, Sessions and Vitter (see the vote here) did not succumb to fear, along with a handful of other Republicans.

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Jim Bunning is in an increasingly nasty fight with the Senate Republican leadership over his 2010 re-election campaign. While NRSC Chair John Cornyn and GOP Leader Mitch McConnell would be happy if he steps aside, they will not publicly acknowledge it. For his part, Bunning has said that he will seek re-election next year. But many wonder if the incumbent can win. He has raised little money and he barely prevailed in 2004. The big knock against him in that race was his ‘erratic’ behavior - and his recent antics give opponents plenty more ammunition for the charge.

And now - as if things couldn’t get any weirder - Bunning has reportedly threatened to resign his seat and allow Kentucky’s Democrat Governor to appoint his replacement:

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Brian covered a lot of what Mitch McConnell said here at CPC in an earlier post, but there was one very commendable thing he said.

He took on the administration’s policy related to GTMO. Hopefully this signals a fight.

“Conservatives also believe that the government has no more solemn duty than to protect the people who established it. And on this last point, let’s be very clear about something else: When it comes to Guantanamo, the new Administration needs to show it’s more concerned with safety than symbolism. Many of those still detained are serious threats to the safety of our citizens. In fact, several of these terrorists still proudly proclaim their desire to kill more Americans. The new Attorney General visited Guantanamo earlier this week and he returned with a glowing report. He said it was well-run, that he was impressed with the people in charge, and that every single person there has to be moved out and Guantanamo shut down in less than a year. The Obama Administration needs to answer a question: Where exactly do they expect to send these guys next January? They have no answer. Well I do: these terrorists are right where they belong.“

I’m here at CPAC, where I’ve had the opportunity to meet briefly with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell to talk over current issues. After a strong speech (which you might ultimately be able to find here), McConnell addressed questions from several bloggers.

To me, the most notable answer from McConnell came in response to a question from Fausta - when she asked his thoughts on Michael Steele’s suggestion that the RNC might not support the re-election of Senators Snowe, Collins and Specter, given their votes for the Obama-Reid-Pelosi Debt Spending Plan. McConnell first threw cold water on the idea - saying that he would support the re-election of his Senate GOP colleagues. Then he predicted that Arlen Specter would be a more dependable vote in the future, saying:

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The Hill reports Mitch McConnell said two things worth commending him on:

“When our good friends on the other side of the aisle say raising taxes on the wealthy, they really mean small businesses,” McConnell said on CNN’s “Late Edition.

and

“I think nationalizing the banks is an absolutely wrong thing to do.”

Good for him. While I’ve got serious disagreements with some of things McConnell does, it is great to hear him take these two positions. He is absolutely right and I hope he pushes his Senate GOP colleagues to hold the line on both issues.

Citibank does not need nationalization. It needs bankruptcy. Just because it has a bunch of foreign investors does not mean it should get out of the process a lesser entity would go through.

In the coming weeks and months, Democrats will unleash a volley of attacks on the Constitution of the United States and our nation’s founding principles. This, of course, we expect… and it starts next week.

The question, however, is whether Republicans – particularly Mitch McConnell and Senate Republican leadership – have the will to stand up and defend the Constitution without bowing to Democrat bluster and offering some “cover-vote” as an alternative they can supposedly “be for?”

We will find out soon enough – the following are the known direct assaults on the Constitution lurking right around the corner:

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A post-Porkulus video from the Whip’s office:

Kudos once again to the House GOP, which held the line in unanimity not once, but twice, against the Democrats’ Porkulus charge.

Senator McConnell, the day you rein in Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe and lead your caucus in holding the line on a transformational piece of legislation like this, we might have space for a kinder word — or even a fun video — for you here at RedState.

However, letting the three votes needed to pass an increase of $800,000,000,000.00 in debt slip away cost you a good bit of goodwill here, at least with me.

Congrats again to Reps. Boehner and Cantor.

Fox News is reporting Senator Mitch McConnell late this afternoon insisted that Republican senators let porkulus go to a vote on the Senate floor without a fight. McConnell apparently reasoned that obstructing the vote would make the GOP look bad and it would be better for the plan to pass and fail than be stopped cold by the GOP. Of course, there would be no guarantee of a successful obstruction given Specter, Snowe, and Collins’ support, but some Senators were frustrated by what they perceived as a McConnell’s insistence that the Republican conference sit on its hands.

Mitch McConnell has spent a decent amount of time in the last week speaking about “his path to a “post-partisan” era,” which involves, in his eyes, “both sides…reject[ing] their party’s extremes and govern[ing] from the middle.” Doing this will somehow, according to the Senate Minority Leader, reverse the GOP’s current course toward being “a regional party.”

Amidst all the bipartisan, permanent-minority mumbo-jumbo, MCConnell has stumbled onto one very important fact: that “common-sense conservative principles aren’t regional,” but that the GOP’s “sales job has been.”

The term “bipartisan,” which has recently been replaced by President Obama and his supporters in the media with the term “post-partisan,” has but one meaning in common usage: a compromise forged by Republicans abandoning their conservative principles on any given issue and meeting Democrats on their staked-out liberal turf.

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According to my Amazon tracking account, 111 balls were sent to Mitch McConnell yesterday.

Have you sent yours?

Let it serve as a reminder to the Senate Republican Conference as a whole that they must stick up for their voters like the House and oppose the Obama Spending Plan.

And remind them that their own plan for mortgage forgiveness sucks.

Send Mitch some balls today.

Last night the House GOP stood together, moderates and conservatives, and opposed Barack Obama’s socialist stimulus scheme.

Today, Mitch McConnell is going to address the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting. According to Roll Call, in his speech McConnell intends to outline a “post partisan path” to leadership that “could also provide a rallying cry for old-line Republicans to reassert their authority within the party” — the same old guard that supported the Bridge to Nowhere and capitulated repeated to President Clinton when he was in office.

Already, McConnell has been favorably quoting Bob Dole on the need to compromise with the Democrats.

So here’s what we need to do. I’ve said he lost his testicles and is now spreading a cancer of capitulation throughout the Senate Republican Conference. We need to send Mitch some balls.

Seriously.

We’re teaming up with the Don’t Go Movement to do just that. Go here and send Mitch some balls. The House GOP can hold the line. Mitch and the Senate GOP should do the same and oppose the stimulus bill.

Mail the balls to Mitch’s Louisville Office:

Sen. Mitch McConnell
601 W. Broadway
Room 630
Louisville, KY 40202
Phone: (502) 582-6304

They can donate them to a local youth program, I’m sure. And they’ll get the point. And thanks to Don’t Go for helping us spread the word.

The Senate GOP Leadership needs to stand up for the GOP, not kowtow to the Democrats.

Senator Lisa Murkowski is a massive proponent of the Bridge to Nowhere.

She is pro-choice. She supports embryonic stem cell research. She refused to support the nuclear option to end judicial filibusters. She supports SCHIP funding. She is in favor of government funding of groups who provide abortions. [UPDATE: She just voted with the Democrats to get rid of the Mexico City Policy that Ronald Reagan adopted too]

She is now officially in Mitch McConnell’s inner circle.

Mind you, she is not all bad. She generally supports free trade. She generally opposes the assault weapons ban. But she is very much a status quo Republican. She is not a great advancer of the conservative agenda, let alone the Republican agenda.

If Mitch McConnell is Chief of Mediocrity, Lisa Murkowski is a great surrogate for him.

And so it goes.

I have previous posited that Mitch McConnell, hero to so many on the right, has infected the GOP with a nasty cancer of defeatism.

If you listen to someone like Lincoln Chafee, it’s all part of the plan to hold the caucus together.

“He’s a good mathematician and he’s going to be counting votes - especially if Obama will be wading in,” Chafee said. “And if the Obama people are smart they won’t depend on a razor-thin margin to prevent filibusters.”

I actually understand that. McConnell will not be effective if he can’t hold his caucus together. I think he is a good mathematician.

But behind the scenes, I think there remain problems.

Barack Obama on Friday told the Republicans they need to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. First, Obama is probably still pissed about Operation Chaos dragging out the Democratic primary. Second, Barack Obama has listened to Rush Limbaugh more than the Republican Party. Had the GOP listened to Rush Limbaugh, the GOP would not be in its present predicament.

As Rush rightly points out, moderates stand for nothing and the voters want to support someone who stands for something. As I’ve previously stated, the GOP and the Democrats both win elections by starting with their base voters and then adding to the base. Lately, the GOP has been intent on starting from outside the base and working its way in.

Mitch McConnell is indicative of this problem and seems intent on spreading his party killing cancer. He needs to turn back from the path down which he intends to lead the Republican Party.

Roll Call notes McConnell intends to outline a “post-partisan” path. Everything you wanted to know about where McConnell is headed can be found in this part of the article:

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