Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been mostly absent from public view in recent months, and I think I know why.
His face on the TV screen or in the newspapers would be a reminder that many months ago he declared his No. 1 priority to be making sure President Barack Obama would only get one term. Not getting the economy going again, not putting Americans back to work, but making sure that the President would appear to have failed to the voters in 2012.
And that, in turn, would be a reminder of who in the Republican Party stood up to denounce McConnell's scurrilously partisan agenda: Nobody — not House Speaker John Boehner, not House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, not Sen. John McCain, not vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, not presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The McConnell agenda to put aside the welfare of the American people in favor of defeating President Obama has been the Republican Party's agenda.
And now Mr. Romney and other Republican candidates talk piously about how sad it is the high hopes of 2008 have been largely disappointed, ignoring the inconvenient fact their party did everything it could to ensure President Obama's failure.
Don't be fooled by the Republican pieties. Remember what McConnell, then the highest-ranking elected Republican in Washington, stated as his and his party's highest priority. And put the blame for the slow pace of economic recovery where it belongs: On those whose policy it was to block the President's efforts to speed things along.
MICHAEL HALLORAN
Troy
