The formula is simple

Do conservatives really call Marco Rubio the “great right hope”? Trust the Repugs to adapt a racist term for a brown-skinned guy.

Mitch McConnell’s post-election speech at the Heritage Foundation, though widely quoted in snippets, is worth a skim.

“By sticking together in principled opposition to policies we viewed as harmful, we made it perfectly clear to the American people where we stood.” Well, you made it perfectly clear what you stood against, which is not the same thing. He doesn’t seem to know the difference.

He complains that since the 2008 election, “The Democrats’ idea of consensus was for Republicans to do whatever the administration wanted us to.” Which was bad. So he presents his idea of consensus, which you’ll be surprised to hear is for Obama to do whatever McConnell wants him to do: “If the administration wants cooperation, it will have to begin to move in our direction.” No hint that cooperation could ever involve the R’s moving in Obama’s direction.


But of course they can’t do that, because the Republicans are the American people and speak for them: “The formula is simple, really: when the administration agrees with the American people, we will agree with the administration. When it disagrees with the American people, we won’t. This has been our posture from the beginning of this administration. And we intend to stick with it.” Take a moment and just take in the arrogance of that statement. Also note that he can’t be saying that the position of the American people, with which the administration is invited to “agree,” was set forth by this week’s election, since that simple formula has been “our posture from the beginning of this administration.” That is, from January 2009 to November 2010, when the House, Senate, and presidency were all dominated by Democrats elected by the American people. So elections must be irrelevant to the determination of the position of the American people, which is always conservative and always unitary. Hard to know why the Republicans bother to let us vote really; we might just continue to elect people who don’t agree with the American people.