Mitch McConnell is seriously off his game

Joe Sonka October 10th, 2008

(crossposted at Barefoot and Progressive)

Mitch McConnell is rapidly losing his reputation as a master campaigner.

With the polls closing in tight, Mitch is loosing his cool, running scared, and making gaffes that he typically avoids.

First, McConnell made the huge gaffe of tricking and using a veteran in an attack ad against Lunsford’s health care company. And getting caught red-handed. Once this manipulative tactic was uncovered, Mitch’s credibility in criticizing anything with Valor, Vencor, or any other V’s went down the tubes. Then, he got called out by another veterans group for implying that they endorsed another attack ad against Lunsford. McConnell’s dishonesty in attacking Lunsford’s weak spot, Vencor, has now snowballed not just into an inability to effectively attack Lunsford’s business record, but a serious veteran problem for Mitch McConnell. Remember, this is a man who filibustered to block the new G.I. Bill, block restoring proper troop rotation, and dismissed the death of our soldiers in Iraq by saying, “remember, these are not draftees, these are full-time professional soldiers”.

Second, the entire state now sees what a coward Mitch McConnell is, as he is canceling and declining debates with Bruce Lunsford by the handful. After the State Farm debate, where Bruce Lunsford stood toe to toe with him, looked him into the eye, and called him a failure, Mitch is scared to death to face that again. And Kentuckians don’t respect a coward.

Third, the new ad against Chuck Schumer shows that Mitch McConnell has lost his cool, going seriously off-message in order to attack his Senate enemy instead of… oh, I don’t know… his opponent?? This was purely a reaction in anger, not a clearheaded decision by someone who is focused on the election at hand.

And he’s even getting called by Republican hacks in KY, in fact, none other than Brett Hall today:

Who’s running against Mitch McConnell for U.S. Senate? Judging for this latest TV ad, we wonder.

(P.S. Mitch…. your base considers you one of those evil “amnesty supporters”, so you might want to keep attacks like that on the DL)

But maybe this is just a sign that all of Mitch McConnell’s other tactics have failed? His first strategy was to show what a powerful Washington D.C. insider he is. EPIC FAIL. Mitch spent millions of dollars highlight something that is one of his greatest liabilities. “Thanks Mitch”! Those millions in ads did nothing to help him in the polls. Then Mitch went on the attack over gasoline. But when are in the back pocket of oil companies like Mitch McConnell, who in the hell is going to buy what you’re selling? FAIL. Then, Mitch moved to the V words, and as we’ve all seen, this has blown up in face, which he has no one to blame for but himself. EPIC FAIL.

Maybe attacking Chuck Schumer and the damned dirty hippies is all he has left? Sad.

With 26 days until the election, the independent polls showing it’s anyone’s race, his own internal pollster showing the race closing, Mitch running scared from debates, losing his cool, and making uncharacteristic mistakes….. I don’t know about you, but I’m confident that we have a great shot at DITCHING MITCH.

3 Responses to “Mitch McConnell is seriously off his game”

  1. # charleson 10 Oct 2008 at 4:58 pm

    I believe that if you check Mitch McConnell voted FOR Senate bill S2611 in 2006 which would have given immediate residency status for millions of people who had entered this country illegally (Illegal Aliens). Mitch did vote against amnesty in 2007 on bills S1348 and S1639 but at first in 2006 Mitch McConnell DID vote for amnesty for Illegal Aliens. Come on Mitch, tell the ENTIRE truth.

  2. # Max Fennigon 10 Oct 2008 at 6:46 pm

    This idiot voted against the EXTENSION OF UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS FOR 800,000 VOTERS AND STOPPED THE BILL FROM GETTING PASSED IN THE SENATE; HE DOESNT CARE AT ALL ABOUT THE MIDDLE CLASS AND HE NEEDS TO GO BADLY!!!

  3. # Chuck Dupreeon 11 Oct 2008 at 12:53 am

    Personally I consider McConnell the worst person in the Senate. Not in every way; Joe Lieberman is more hypocritical, for example. McConnell is openly in the pockets of the super-rich and the big corporations and he makes no bones about it. No hypocrisy there, you gotta give him his due.

    But he’s promoted the worst, and opposed the best, that the Senate has tried to do. He’s engaged full time in the class war that dominates American life, and quite clearly on the wrong side.

    We need to dump his ass, and November is looking better all the time.

    As a Kentucky kid (Ashland) who moved around a lot and ended up in San Francisco, I’ve shifted so far left that I rarely vote for Democrats. But I think Lunsford is setting an example with his ad about McConnell’s involvement in creating the financial crisis, an example that Democrats nationwide should be watching carefully. I blogged about it (
    http://badattitudes.com/MT/archives/2008/10/how_much_is_it.html ), riffing on the Herald-Leader article ( http://www.kentucky.com/210/v-print/story/548724.html ), in case anyone happens to be interested.

    The problem for many Democrats, however, is that unlike Lunsford they have various connections to the mortgage crisis, having enabled the whole unregulated market that created the various fancy debt instruments that threaten world markets.

    As an aside, we long ago blogrolled Ditch Mitch in a special place — Politics in Action — at Bad Attitudes. Our founder is a former White House speechwriter under Carter who worked with Hendrik Hertzberg and for James Fallows, and now writes detective novels and blogs. He handed me the editing functions a year or two back so he could concentrate on his book about snakes.

    We and our friends are rooting for Lunsford. The dream is enough Democratic Senators to shove Lieberman out the door and still break filibusters.

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