In praise of Mitch McConnell

A Republican friend asked me:

     "When are you going to move on? Let's stop talking about Trump and work to help people."

I responded:

     "I will move on when Trump no longer reflects the mindset of GOP leaders and voters."

Democrats are widely critical of Mitch McConnell. I am not. I am praising him today. 

Democrats write me to complain that McConnell is a day late and a dollar short. True. But better late than never. 

Mitch McConnell is part of the solution. I want more Republicans to act like McConnell, even if he is a crafty old partisan trying to thread the needle between the people who still adore Trump (which is why he voted to acquit) and the educated, moderate donor class of people who turned off the money spigot to the GOP (which is why he finally said aloud that Trump lied to everyone and attempted a coup d'état.) 

McConnell had motivation to change his tune. Donors don't trust populist revolution and mob rule. Donors are prosperous people. They own things. They run businesses. They are, as a group, practical, effective people. McConnell was getting signals from them. The Chamber of Commerce was starting to give money to Democrats; it was working closely with Biden and praising him; businesses PACs were refusing campaign help to legislators who tried to overthrow the election. That was body language McConnell understood. 

People with businesses and money to protect think Republicans were playing with fire by condoning lawlessness and political revolution. Trump is a right wing authoritarian, stirring up anger at immigrants and people of color. Donor elites liked the lower taxes and business-friendly judges, but they couldn't accept the process and precedent: Anarchy. Trump was normalizing populist mob violence. 

The next populist revolution could be in the opposite direction, from a charismatic leftist, stirring up crowds angry at corporate power and wealth. There is lots of history of that. The rich have gotten richer, and stirred-up people might turn their sights onto them. Those in-your-face people with American flags on their pickup trucks are angry and armed. They just might decide they are more angry with the landlords, businessmen, and billionaires than they are with the immigrant family living in a shoebox working two lousy jobs. 

Mitch McConnell is in play, seeking approval and validation where he can find it.

I consider this my Operant Conditioning approach. Imagine rats and pigeons in cages in laboratories of Harvard psychologist and theorist B. F. Skinner. Operant Conditioning is training them by rewarding certain behaviors and not others. You never really know about "mind," Skinner said, nor motivation, volition, rational choices nor gut feelings. But brains respond to incentives. You can get a pigeon to play ping pong if you feed it when it picks up a paddle and hits the ball, and don't feed it when it just sits there. It figures it out. 

(B. F. Skinner's critics said the image was insulting when applied to humans. Skinner said it is the way all of us learn anything and are motivated to do anything. It is the economic notion of the rational actor, responding to incentives.)

I want McConnell and Republicans generally to figure out that Trump was toxic to their brand and political careers. I don't expect to give many Republican candidates money, but I can praise them when they do the right things. It is fair to them. I want to be fair. 

I won't give an electrical shock for heading in the wrong direction in a maze, but I will be critical of people who support undermining our democracy, and I have been, perhaps tiresomely so. But when Republicans speak out to condemn Trump's lawlessness--as McConnell finally did, I will do my tiny part, and thank and praise them for it. If being a Trump-supporting conspiracy spreader gets rewarded within the circle of GOP precinct committee people--positive reinforcement short term--but then is led to a humiliating general election loss--negative reinforcement--candidates will figure it out.

Mitch McConnell would have saved the world a lot of heartache if he had said this louder and clearer and earlier, but he said it. It sounds about right to me.

Good for him.

Guest Comments from Mitch McConnell:

January 6th was a disgrace.

American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like.

Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President.

They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.

Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.

The House accused the former President of, quote, ‘incitement.’ That is a specific term from the criminal law. There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.

The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President. And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated President kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.