Posted originally on The Conservative Tree House on December 29, 2020 by Sundance
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked a bipartisan effort to enlarge the COVID relief bill to $2,000. President Trump supports the enhanced relief package. As a consequence, in justifying his maneuver McConnell did something we are all too familiar with. It is time to expose the Decepticon game again; this time people will accept.
[POTUS Tweet Link – Washington Post Link]
At first blush you might ask yourself why Mitch McConnell would block this bill and put the Georgia special election senate races in question. He just handed Georgia democrats an atomic sledgehammer. However, what most people do not understand is how McConnell works; being in the minority position is not adverse to his interests. McConnell operates with a Machiavellian strategy, so we will explain.
Senator McConnell said the $2,000 bill would be attached to two other POTUS priorities including (1) section 230 reform, and (2) a request for congressional review of the 2020 election fraud, both have been requested by President Trump. This is how Mitch McConnell justifies; this is how the GOP will defend his decision; the creation of a false dichotomy is how McConnell works. But watch what he is really doing.
McConnell admits in his floor testimony the three stage bill will take time to assemble. In essence he admits publicly the $2k, 23o reform and 2020 election review committee will take longer than the January 5th Georgia runoff. So he is admitting the toxic political issue of the $2,000 denial will exist to benefit the democrats in the race. Accept this.
Second, McConnell knows a second bill with all three elements will not pass the House. McConnell knows it is a pure political posturing exercise that will produce nothing, yet provide more justification for his blockage.
Once you stop being a battered conservative; meaning once you accept that McConnell knows he is creating a dynamic that supports the GA democrats; then you move to the question: ‘why would McConnell take an action that would put him in the minority?’
On its face the question seems absurd; however, it only seems absurd because people don’t understand the schemes in the upper chamber, the Senate, under Leader McConnell and Leader Harry Reid before him. The institution of the Senate requires a voter to understand the shell game. The pea is never where you think it is.
Defenders of the Decepticon schemes rely on our inability to understand a hidden agenda; a secret agenda… However, with more eyes now open this outline will start to make sense.
First, McConnell doesn’t care about holding a majority position in the Senate. Whether he is a majority leader or a minority leader doesn’t matter to McConnell. In fact McConnell’s political skill-set does better in the minority than the majority.
The preferred political position for Mitch McConnell is where he has between 45 and 49 republican Senators, and the Democrats hold the Majority with around 55. Of course with Senator Harry Reid’s retirement, this would now imply Majority leader Chuck Schumer holding office.
Why does McConnell prefer the minority position?
The answer is where you have had to actually follow Mitch McConnell closely to see how he works. When the Majority has around 52 to 55 seats, they need McConnell to give them 8 to 9 votes to overcome the three-fifths (60 vote) threshold for their legislative needs. It is in the process of trade and payment for those 8 to 9 votes where McConnell makes more money, and holds more power, than as a sitting Majority Leader.
The 60 vote threshold, and McConnell’s incredible skillset in the minority, is where he shines. Each of the needed votes to achieve sixty is worth buckets of indulgence to the minority leader and those on K-Street who need the Senate to support their legislative constructs. The votes to get to sixty are worth a lot of money.
This institutional dynamic is the currency of affluence and influence in the Senate; this is why Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell never changed the Senate rules for legislative passage. This is why the filibuster was retained and why the 60 vote threshold was always beneficial to both parties. The color of the flag atop the spire matters not.
Except for budget passage (reconciliation); and McConnell being forced by intransigence in the era of Trump resistance to change the judicial vote threshold to 51; McConnell would never consider changing the legislative threshold (60 votes) to a simple majority (51 votes) because it would be removing his favored position.
A simple majority vote is adverse to the institutional interests. That is why McConnell retained it during his reign as majority leader; as did Harry Reid before him.
The process of selling votes to the 60-vote threshold in the Senate is where the UniParty operates; and where the status of maximum financial benefit for the minority exists.
Currently, as majority leader with 52 GOP senators, McConnell needs to purchase eight or nine votes for each legislative priority.
Mitch McConnell doesn’t like being the purchaser, he prefers being the vote seller where his skill-set as a broker really shines. McConnell is much better at extracting terms for his vote sales, than being the purchaser for the votes of an intransigent minority wing. This is why the current Senate doesn’t pass many bills.
If Democrats were in the majority, and McConnell was the minority leader, we would see much more legislation pass because Schumer is a more well financed buyer (K-Street) and McConnell is a much better seller. Whenever we have this minority dynamic it always leaves people confused because few really watch what McConnell is doing.
McConnell takes his favorite 18 controlled GOP senators (Decepticons) and he brokers their votes on an ‘as needed’ basis. The eight to ten senators he selects each time get compensated in the process. McConnell rotates the financial beneficiaries on a bill-by-bill basis. As a consequence each of the 18 or so McConnell senators get quite wealthy over time, and McConnell gains additional power and influence.
McConnell decides who takes committee positions, those committee positions are worth money to K-Street purchasers of legislation. That’s one aspect to his power.
McConnell also hand-selects which senators will provide the votes to the majority to reach the 60 vote threshold. He uses a formula of favoritism, loyalty and studies the election cycles to determine who in his tribe will sell their votes and gain. That is the second aspect to his power.
If any of the republican Senators attempt to disrupt this UniParty business model McConnell excommunicates them from the legislative process; the best reference for the ‘excommunicado’ approach is former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC).
Additional references for how McConnell operates this scheme as the Minority Leader can be found in the Corker-Cardin amendment which allowed the Iran nuclear deal/payments under Obama; and/or the “fast track” Trade Promotion Authority deal for TPP passage, again for President Obama’s maximum benefit.
In these two examples McConnell worked with Harry Reid to flip the vote threshold from two-thirds (super-majority) need to approve, to two-thirds (super-majority) needed to deny. They flipped the dynamic in order to give Obama the tools he needed for the Iran deal and the Trans-Pacific-Partnership trade agreement (TPP).
[SIDEBAR – Within TPP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was again working on the priorities of U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue. McConnell and Donohue have been working together on UniParty trade and domestic legislative issues for around twenty years. It is well established that Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has one major career alliance that has been unbroken and unchanged for well over two decades. That alliance is with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and specifically with CoC President Tom Donohue.
CoC President Tom Donohue represents Wall Street interests and supports: all multinational trade deals, open-border immigration policies, amnesty legislative constructs, and all of the issues that have generally irked common-sense GOP voters for the same period of time. [SEE HERE and SEE HERE]. Tom Donohue is the biggest lobbyist spender in DC every year, by a mile.
To remind ourselves how Minority and Majority Senator McConnell took down the threat of the Tea Party revisit these old articles: CNN Part I and CNN Part II both showcase how McConnell works. Then do some research on how McConnell worked with Haley Barbour in Mississippi [SEE HERE] – END SIDEBAR].
Hopefully, now you can see how the business model within the senate is lucrative from a financial standpoint. Selling votes from the minority position is worth a lot of money. Additionally, the power dynamic is essentially even within this process. The majority holds political and financial power… and the minority holds enough political power to keep the majority in check (as well as mutually beneficial financial power).
For those who understand the dynamic the next obvious point is: what happens if Schumer takes the majority, eliminates the filibuster and takes legislative passage to a simple majority (51-votes)? This is, after all, what the far-left has promised to do.
From McConnell’s position if the Democrats are the party that changes the precedent for Senate legislative passage, he feels it will provide him ammunition to retake control in the 2022 mid-term; and he wouldn’t be the historic figure to have changed the rules.
McConnell counts on the GOPe machinery (RNC), the purchased and allied Wall Street media, and his K-street backers to assist him in getting back in power. The righteous donation requests from the political and financial class are always enhanced by the extremes and outrage. If Schumer kills the filibuster and takes the senate to a simple majority McConnell will weaponize the maneuver against his “friend across the aisle”.
That’s the way the Machiavellian processes work….
Centinel2012 