Didn't Mitch McConnell just appear at CPAC and tell the faithful that they wouldn't be disappointed if they gave the GOP a Senate majority? I don't know about you but I took that as an attempt, however insincere, to tell conservatives, No, we're really your allies!
I guess all this means is that McConnell is a Washingtonian through and through, saying whatever he thinks he needs to say to the audience at hand. Bring him to CPAC and he promises a bright way forward to a conservative future for America. Put him in front of a New York Times reporter and you're going to get . . . this:
This election season, Republicans led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are taking a much harder line as they sense the majority within reach. Top congressional Republicans and their allies are challenging the advocacy groups head on in an aggressive effort to undermine their credibility. The goal is to deny them any Senate primary victories, cut into their fund-raising and diminish them as a future force in Republican politics.
“I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said in an interview, referring to the network of activist organizations working against him and two Republican incumbents in Kansas and Mississippi while engaging in a handful of other contests. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”
Now I think where he's coming from is this: Republicans are so close to winning a Senate majority in 2014 they can taste it, but it's going to be close, as in a matter of a seat or two. When McConnell and other Beltway Republican types think Tea Party nominee, they don't think principled constitutionalist. They think bumbling, in-over-their-heads candidates like Sharron Angle or Christine O'Donnell who turn highly winnable races into missed opportunities.
Honestly, do you ever think about what might have been if Sue Loudon - who is not exactly a liberal - had won the Nevada nomination and taken out Harry Reid? That's how McConnell looks at it. In his mind the tension is not between cocktail party RINOs and committed conservatives. It's between winning a majority and staying in the minority. Then, he figures, the CPAC crowd can watch and be amazed as Majority Leader McConnell does all the things they long ago became convinced he would never do because he's a damnable RINO.
But even if you grant him that point of view, why say it that way?
Because McConnell has a history, when talking to the MSM, of kowtowing to them and making sure they know he is not one of those wild-eyed loonies. Remember this?
The conventional media wisdom at the time was that the GOP committed a huge blunder by letting the government shut down over ObamaCare funding, and McConnell will not have the MSM disapproving of GOP strategy. So his job is to go on CBS News and assure Bob Schieffer that boy howdy, they've learned their lesson and they'll never do that again!
It's the same instinct he took into this interview with the New York Times, which thinks the Tea Party is nothing but a bunch of loons. In order to win general elections in November, McConnell believes he has to reassure MSMers like the Times that reasonable Republicans will win the day over the loons. Maybe he didn't realize when he gave the interview what wide play it would receive, but whatever good he may have done in addressing CPAC (and I honestly doubt it was much), he promptly undid with this interview.
Of course, if he does become majority leader and he does manage to push through real conservative reforms - particularly the repeal of ObamaCare - all will surely be forgiven. But why commit the slight in the first place?
