Senate Republican holds remarkable whine-fest on floor

Mitch McConnell and the person whose defeat is his top priority.

When the Senate reconvened on Wednesday, Republican leadership held its usual weekly press conference. But, unusually, they fled before reporters could ask any questions. None of them, not one, was wiling to talk about Mitt Romney's disastrous 47 percent video. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, on the other hand, had plenty to say.

[...] So who are those Americans Mitt Romney disdains as 'victims' and 'those people?'

They're not avoiding their tax bills using Cayman Island tax shelters or Swiss bank accounts, like Mitt Romney. [...]

Thousands of families making more than $1 million pay nothing in federal income taxes each year.

Is Mitt Romney among them?

We'll never know, since he refuses to release tax returns from the years before he was running for president.

This brought on howls of protest from Senate Republicans, none of whom were willing to defend Romney, but all of whom were outraged that Harry Reid said something political on the floor which would be totally out of bounds if only that pesky Constitution didn't say otherwise. Seriously. They say Reid's words "would violate federal rules if not for the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution." Damn that Constitution!

So they took advantage of the Speech and Debate clause this morning to, en masse, come to the floor not to defend Mitt Romney, but to bash President Obama and whine about how the mean Democratic leadership didn't let them accomplish anything this session. Seriously.

On the floor, more than 30 Senate Republicans took turns trashing President Barack Obama and the Democratic-led Senate in an extraordinary series of speeches. [...]

'The president, with a lot of help from the Democratic-led Senate ' has deliberately chosen inaction,' said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) rattling off a list of the nation's woes including the $16 trillion debt and impeding budget cuts to the Pentagon.

Calling it a 'complete disgrace,' and 'embarrassing,' McConnell tagged the Senate as an 'extension of the president's reelection campaign' and lamented that the chamber has 'completely broken down as an institution.'

Yes, you read that right. Mitch McConnell, the guy who famously said two years ago, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." The same Mitch McConnell who has blown away all records for obstruction in the five and half years since he's been minority leader, including an unprecedented filibuster of an appeals court nominee. That Mitch McConnell is blaming the president and Democrats for the dysfunctional Senate. It was a tour de force of bullshittery. Which isn't a good enough word to describe how jaw-droppingly mendacious McConnel was. McConnell broke the dictionary.

But here's the simple truth: When you're whining, you're losing. Republicans are losing, and each of those 30 who showed up on the floor today for the whine-fest knows it. They're not going to get the Senate back, and many of the Democrats who are going to win will work to make Republican obstruction a thing of the past.

This election is going to upgrade the Senate. Plenty of the winning candidates are those Senate candidates that Daily Kos has endorsed, and they have all vowed to reform the Senate, to get rid of the rules that allow Republicans to keep government from working. Here's our chance to bury Mitch McConnell's obstruction.

Anwer Mitch McConnell's stunning hypocrisy. Please donate $3 to the candidates on our Upgrade the Senate page.