Today, the House voted for fourth time on who their next Speaker will be, and for the fourth time, 19 to 20 GOP holdouts blocked front-runner Kevin McCarthy from being elected. Some people view this as evidence that the Republican party is in shambles, while others see this as true democracy at work. As House Republicans battle over who will be the next Speaker, Senator Mitch McConnell made history as the longest serving Republican Senator and was unanimously elected to lead the Senate Republicans for the 8th time. He is also making public appearances with Joe Biden touting their two multi-trillion-dollar spending bills. With the battle so fierce in the House, it is fair to wonder how does Mitch McConnell always get elected as the Republican leader in the Senate without much opposition? Why is he so untouchable? He does not represent the rank-and-file Republican voter. He is not a stalwart of conservative principles, and he rarely gives much resistance to the Democrats agenda. He helped the Democrats pass their $1.4 trillion Infrastructure bill last year, and he recently worked with the Democrats to pass a $1.7 trillion omnibus bill which adds $1 trillion to the national debt, when he could have held out to pass a continuing resolution, which would have given the new Republican Speaker, the power to help set the legislative and budgetary agenda for the next fiscal year. But instead, McConnell cut the legs out from under the new Speaker even before he was elected.
How does McConnell continually maintain his position as the Republican leader in the most powerful legislative body in our government when he clearly does not represent Republican issues or principles? In the 2022 elections, McConnell actively worked against a Republican takeover of the Senate. He pulled campaign funding from Republican candidates in two tightly contested Senate races in Arizona and New Hampshire, while funneling that money to support Lisa Murkowski to defeat a fellow Republican, Kelly Tshibaka for senator in Alaska. All three Republican candidates that McConnell helped to defeat, Tshibaka, Blake Masters and Don Bolduc, would not have supported McConnell for Republican leader in the Senate, and that’s why he worked to defeat them. McConnell would rather have the Republicans lose and he maintain his leadership role in the minority, than have the Republicans win the majority, but he lose his leadership role. He would rather be the head of a mouse than the tail of a lion.
McConnell continually puts himself ahead of the party and the country. His ties to China are bordering on an illegal conflict of interest. His wife, Elaine Chau has done extensive business inside of China, and as the former Secretary of Transportation, she has been accused of using her office to give favorable treatment to the Foremost Group, a New York-based shipping business owned by her father, James, and sister, Angela. The Foremost Group and the Chao family received loans between $350,000 and $1 million from the U.S. government and Chinese banks which are hostile to the United States.
McConnell has been a Senator from Kentucky, one of our poorest states, for almost 40 years, and his net worth has ballooned to over $40 million, most of which is from his wife’s family businesses. He and his wife have spent decades getting rich off of China. Is it simply a coincidence that most of the legislation that comes out of the Senate regarding China, our number one geo-political enemy, is more favorable to China than to the United States? Is it also just a coincidence that McConnell was against the tariffs that President Trump placed on China? McConnell continually sells out to China, making America weaker and more vulnerable in order to enrich himself.
I have never understood people like Mitch McConnell. He is 80 years old, and has more money than he could ever spend in 2 lifetimes, plus upon his retirement, he will receive a government pension which is more lucrative than many Fortune 500 CEOs will receive, and not only does he refuse to step down, and allow someone else the opportunity to represent his state and lead his party, he is holding onto power like grim death, so he can continue to sell out his country and his party for his own personal gain.
Sadly, this type of behavior is not exclusive to Mitch McConnell. The more you look at the way our government works, the more you realize that most of the politicians and the bureaucrats who work for the government are not there to serve the country or its citizens, but to serve themselves and their own interest. They are doing the exact opposite of what they are charge to do. Recently retired, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longest serving bureaucrat in our government, pushed vaccines on people who did not need them because he was getting royalties from the pharmaceutical companies. His net worth has doubled since the start of the pandemic, and he took in over $17 million in 2020 alone from the pandemic. Like McConnell, he is an 80-year-old man, staring at a $350,000 per year pension, yet he was giving questionable medical advice to further enrich himself.
Likewise, Nancy Pelosi made millions of dollars by funneling inside information to her husband, Paul who made stock trades and investments off of that information. She held onto to her job and continued her corruption into her 80’s. Most people in Washington exploit their government job to make millions of dollars. Liz Cheney entered Washington 6 years ago with a net worth of $7 million, and she left with a net worth of $44 million – most of that money was made from her husband’s ties to a Chinese Communist Party technology firm. It’s no wonder that she called Trump a fascist, a racist, and an insurrectionist, and she said “he should never be in the Oval Office again,” after Trump put in policies that hurt China. Barack Obama’s net worth when he took office was less than $1 million, and today he is worth over $70 million. Likewise, Bill and Hillary Clinton’s net worth went from a half of million dollars to over $125 million from the time he took office until today.
Certain people in our society, Dave Chapelle, Kid Rock, Tim Allen, and others, have deemed themselves “uncancelable”, meaning they have earned enough money and wealth where they are no longer beholden to big corporations or the media for their livelihood, so they do not have to succumb the mobs on social media. They can say and do anything they want because they do not need anybody else’s money. You would think that Mitch McConnell, Dr. Fauci and Nancy Pelosi would have arrived at a point in their lives – 80+ years old with tens of millions of dollars in the bank and a hefty pension – where they have so much money that they no longer beholden to the corruption and the graft in Washington any longer, that they could grow a backbone and stand up to the lies, the fraud and the corruption that is so rampant in DC. We could only hope, that at this point in their lives that each of them would go straight, and put the country and the citizens ahead of their own self-interests, but sadly Fauci and Pelosi continued their corruption up until their last day in office, and McConnell, as we just saw with the omnibus bill, is fully intent on continuing his corruption as long as we let him. So, as long as the corruption in Washington is this steep and embedded, who becomes the new Speaker of the House is a moot point.
__________________________________________________________
Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.