Mitch McConnell Goes There on Joe Biden’s ‘Incoherent’ Georgia Speech in Calculated Move – Opinion

Not surprisingly, the unabashedly partisan, racially charged speech President Joe Biden delivered Tuesday in Georgia on supporting an overhaul of the Senate’s rules on the filibuster royally cheesed off his political opposition, particularly when Biden literally compared those who disagree with him on changing the filibuster rules and federalizing elections to prominent Democrat racists of the past like Bull Connor, Jefferson Davis, and George Wallace.

“I ask every elected official in America: How do you want to be remembered?” Biden asked rhetorically. “Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Are you ready to stand on the side Bull Connor or John Lewis? Are you ready to stand on the side Jefferson Davis or Abraham Lincoln? You have until now to choose. Our elections. To defend our democracy.”

Chief among those disgusted with Biden’s smear against both Republicans and the Democrat Senators (Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) who oppose altering or eliminating the filibuster rules was Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who took to the floor of the U.S. Senate earlier today and laid into Biden, calling his speech “incoherent” and “profoundly unpresidential” for a man who pledged to be a unifier who would bridge longstanding political divides in order to get things done.

Early on in the speech, McConnell reminded his colleagues and anyone else listening or watching that he knew Biden well since they had worked alongside each other in the Senate and when Biden was Vice President under Barack Obama, but that he “did not recognize the man at that podium yesterday.”

McConnell made a deliberate move of mentioning their relationship. McConnell knows well that Joe Biden loves to tell people how far back he went in Senate, and what cordial relationships Biden said he had formed with political opponents over the years. McConnell knows that it’s important to Biden to be viewed as a skillful, bipartisan negotiator (even though the image is not remotely true) and in invoking his relationship, he was saying in a nutshell “the man I know and the man Joe Biden professes to be is not the one we saw on that stage.”

Here’s some of what McConnell said:

Twelve months ago, the President said that “politics need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path.” That was just twelve months ago. Yesterday, he put a huge can of gasoline in front of that flame.

Twelve months ago, the President said “every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war.” But yesterday, he said anyone who opposes smashing the Senate and letting Democrats rewrite election law is a domestic “enemy” and a traitor like Jefferson Davis.

A week ago, President Biden delivered a lecture on January 6, 2009 about not encouraging political violence. Yesterday, with the world’s largest megaphone, he invoked the literal Civil War and said we are on the doorstep of “autocracy.” He talked about domestic “enemies.” Rhetoric unbecoming of a President of the United States.

In less than a year, “restoring the soul of America” has become: agree with me, or you’re a bigot. You can lower the temperature or invoke totalitarian countries and civil war. These inflammatory words were not intended to convince skeptical Republican or Democratic Senators. You could not think of a better way to promote the legislative filibuster that a president who abandons rational persuasion in favor pure demagoguery.

If a President shouts that 52 Senators are racist, he will get whatever he wants. This is exactly what the Framers intended when they created the Senate. The whole thing is a strong argument to preserve Senate rules which allow for deliberation and force bipartisan compromise. It is hard to find a better example of this. This episode is a great example of why Senator Biden was correct about filibuster, and why President Biden is wrong.

One respected scholar explained it this way: “The smallest majority we’ve ever seen in our politics is trying to change the rules for how people get elected in every state.” That’s just about the best argument for the filibuster you could possibly imagine.”

Watch a portion of McConnell’s speech below:

Mitch McConnell: Biden “delivered a deliberately divisive speech that was designed to pull our country further apart … He compared … a bipartisan majority of senators to literal traitors. It is so profoundly, deeply unpresidential. pic.twitter.com/DQdrIEwQn2

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) January 12, 2022

McConnell is smart enough that he knows he’s not going to change Biden’s mind, nor Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s, who he also criticized in his speech. He does however know that McConnell sounds more like a grown man than Schumer or Biden. We also know from all the information that McConnell enjoys a better working relationship to Manchin than Biden. McConnell’s comments today will resonate much better with Manchin than Biden’s yesterday. Actually, yesterday’s comments by Biden likely strengthened Manchin’s resolve to continue his fight.

What McConnell’s remarks did were to cut Biden down to size, painting him as the duplicitous, double-talking “leader” that he is while emphasizing just how awful his speech was and how it ruthlessly (and wrongly) impugned the reputations of any Democrat who dared to think differently than him, like Manchin and Sinema.

Biden claimed yesterday that he thought he was being intelligent by accelerating on the Woke Express. McConnell let him know today that Biden did not just steer the train wildly off course with what he told that Georgia crowd, but that he derailed it — and that the results for him will ultimately be catastrophic in the coming months legislatively and also come election time.

Flashback:Mitch McConnell ups his game on Joe Manchin at the Perfect Time