Three weeks after a dejected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ripped the Senate Republican leader for orchestrating the death of her “Green New Deal,” Sen. Mitch McConnell has struck back, accusing the first term House member and top Democrats of waging an “economic culture war” against red America.
In a sweeping blow against growing Democratic efforts to squelch conservative voices and force progressive policies and programs on a wary nation, McConnell warned that the Left is ready to “blow up” decades of rules to get their way on issues like the environment and government-financed healthcare.
“Progressives are openly acknowledging they’ll never get their agenda through the constitutional machinery as it’s operated for centuries, so they’ve concluded it’s the constitutional machinery that has to go. Change the rules if you can’t win otherwise,” he said in a well-received speech at Hillsdale College late Monday.
“It is,” he said, “an effort to change the rules of American politics itself. Our whole nation is founded as a delicate compromise between different states, different regions, competing interests. This seeks to blow all of that up. Blow it all up.”
And, he added, the liberal coasts want to be in charge. “Policies that would let coastal cities like New York and San Francisco redesign the whole country in their image, paired with political changes so that simply running up the score in those same few places would give you all the levers of power. I see this [as] a total rejection of the federalism and respect for regional diversity that gave us the Senate itself, the Electoral College, the whole founding compromise of our Constitution,” he said.
In the address, McConnell called on Middle America to fight back.
“We all need to fight back against this toxic, counter-constitutional, anti-speech trend in our nation’s institutions and in each of our personal lives. Every American should discipline ourselves to remember the difference between simple disagreement and permanent outrage, and avoid being part of the problem. Avoid being part of that problem,” the Kentucky lawmaker said.
McConnell arrived at the Michigan college after his latest string of victories, capped with winning confirmation of Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the rejection of the Green New Deal, which he called “a left-wing Christmas list.”
He described the fights to the students and suggested that Democrats, unwilling to accept the outcome, have moved to silence critics and force the center of the country to give in to the liberal coasts.
Obviously targeting liberals like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Ocasio-Cortez, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, he accused liberals from New York and California of having a “geographic prejudice” against Middle America.
“Well, now this geographic prejudice has been weaponized into actual proposals that dilute the voices of Americans who aren’t enlightened enough to elect Democrats … And you’d better believe that my Republican colleagues and I are not about to let the fundamental traditions of our constitutional order crumble — crumble — because Brooklyn and the Bay Area are tired of playing by the rules,” he said.
“The Senate was designed to require genuine consensus before making policy — genuine consensus. Both sides should respect that design and continue to let the Senate legislate like the Senate. And if the voters, the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the Constitution are all stumbling blocks for Democrats’ plan to rule over Middle America like we’re colonies of the coastal cities, then something needs to change all right. Maybe they ought to consider changing their ideas. How about that?” he said.
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McConnell ad-libbed much of the speech and was folksy and friendly, even drawing laughs for some comments, such as when he described his job.
“It’s a little bit like being the groundskeeper at a cemetery,” the senator said. “Everybody’s under you, but nobody’s listening.”
He spent part of his address promising to defend the First Amendment against “angry mobs” that are trying to shut down conservative speech.
“I see political speech as the mother of all of our freedoms. The liberty to exchange ideas is how self-government can play out and other important questions can actually be litigated,” said McConnell, who was given an honorary doctorate of public service by the college.
