A rare defense of Mitch McConnell against an unfair criticism

Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a fan of Mitch McConnell. Kentucky's senior senator and the current majority leader of the U.S. Senate is the personification of the Republican establishment that seems more interested in siding with liberals and Democrats than with the base of his own party.

He's also a political opportunist who demands loyalty but shows none. When times get tough for Republicans, he abandons them. Just ask Ernie Fletcher, or Alabama's Roy Moore.

I went from being a vocal McConnell supporter during his 2002 re-election campaign to vowing that I would never vote for him again just three years later. And indeed, I haven't. If he's had a worthy primary challenger, such as Matt Bevin in 2014, I cast my ballot for them. If not, I wrote someone in. And I didn't vote for McConnell in the general elections either. I certainly didn't vote for Bruce Lunsford in 2008, or for Alison Lundergan Grimes in 2014, but McConnell didn't get my vote either.

My list of grievances with McConnell is long. And while I've always been on his side on things like First Amendment issues, I'm no fan of his fondness for big government, and his predicable support for liberal Republicans over conservative ones is frustrating. He'd rather pass a bill that increases government spending and programs than shut down the government to force cuts. While his record on judicial appointments is admirable, it's absurd to think that any Republican Senate majority leader wouldn't do likewise.

But there's at least one criticism of McConnell that's floating around as he seeks his seventh six-year term in the Senate that is totally off-base and needs to be refuted.

McConnell's 2020 re-election campaign has been on the left's radar screen for several years. National left-wing interests are going all-in on prospective challenger Amy McGrath's candidacy. But even before she entered politics via her failed run for Congress last year, McConnell's years of service had become an issue.

It's no secret that Kentucky doesn't do well in a lot of national rankings. We rank low in a lot of good categories, and we rank high in a lot of bad categories. You've probably seen the memes on social media, saying that after more than three decades of McConnell's service in Washington, Kentucky is a terrible place and McConnell needs to be replaced.

It would make a nice story if it was true. But the reality is that all of those things that are being pointed out are state issues, not federal matters. And which party's had a stranglehold on control of this state for longer than McConnell's been in the Senate? Hint: it's not McConnell's party.

Kentucky Democrats own every one of the state's failures and shortcomings, from educational attainment to health issues to poverty rates. Most of us have seen but two Republican governors in our lifetimes. The GOP has only had control of both houses of the General Assembly since January 2017. Democrats still hold the lead in voter registrations and in the overall number of local elected officials (last year, for the first time, Republicans finally netted a majority of county judge-executive positions.) Republicans haven't had control of the state for long enough to fix our issues, much less create them.

So, to blame Mitch McConnell for the state's problems is to be intellectually dishonest.

Democrats tried to do this in 2014 in a controversy that focused on my hometown. Prior to a public appearance in Beattyville by McConnell, the editor of one of the local newspapers -- well-known as being a liberal Democrat -- asked him about what his plans were to bring jobs to Lee County and other areas of the state with high unemployment rates. McConnell answered, correctly, that job recruitment is not a duty of the U.S. Senate, but is instead a job for state agencies. The editor wrote a biased story pegged on that comment. Local Democrats invited Jerry Lundergan's Daughter to town for a round-table, which the editor gleefully attended. The matter ended up in her ads, replete with an image of the misleading story's headline. It didn't work, either locally or statewide. McConnell beat her in Lee County by 36 points, and he scored a 12-point victory statewide despite a number of polls that predicted his defeat.

Now, they don't even have that platform to use. Job creation has skyrocketed during the past four years of Matt Bevin's gubernatorial administration. So far, it seems McGrath's primary focus is going to be to blame McConnell for a toxic ideological divide in the nation. (As if the partisan impeachment effort isn't a bigger contributor.)

As I've mentioned, there are plenty of reasons to dislike the incumbent senior senator. Liberals have Merrick Garland and Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh; conservatives have his avowed opposition to tea party principles and candidates and his affinity for big government.

But if you're going to criticize McConnell, do so on sound intellectual footing. Blaming him for state problems that are the state government's responsibility is not a valid reason to oppose him.