Talk radio is the reason Republican base voters have unrealistic expectations, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday, adding that it may have contributed to Donald Trump’s win in the party’s presidential primary.
“A lot of base voters have been really misled by a lot of talk show hosts and others about what’s achievable when you don’t have the White House,” McConnell said at an event sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, responding to a question about why voters seem to be fed up and have largely favored outsider candidates over the course of this year’s presidential election.
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He said that while the Constitution is discussed regularly, “people don’t seem to know anything about it.”
“There is a president, the only one … who can sign something into law or veto a bill. The notion of shutting down government to defund Obamacare, even if that would achieve the result … is what my friend George Will would call the politics of futile gesture, or put another way, doing dumb things.
“I’m not in favor of futile gestures and doing dumb things,” McConnell added. “I think the reason people are unhappy is because of the condition of the country. And because they’ve been fed the notion that somehow a Republican Congress can overcome a Democratic president and somehow bring him to his knees when it’s not possible.
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McConnell then listed measures that have been brought to Obama’s desk.
“One thing we have done is we got control of the Senate, and we put the repeal of Obamacare on his desk, we put the Waters of the United States on his desk, we put the Keystone Pipeline on his desk, but all of those who enjoy being a circular firing squad will not pay attention to the fact that we’ve gone as far as we can go without having somebody who can sign the measure that you put on his desk,” he said.
