Former GOP Senator Who First Hired McConnell Slams Him for Opposing Obamacare

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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/former-gop-senator-marlow-cook-hired-mcconnell-opposing-obamacare


Former GOP Senator Who First Hired McConnell Slams Him for Opposing Obamacare
"It tells me he's not looking out for his own constituency."

—By David Corn
| Thu May 15, 2014 6:00 AM EDT


By mounting a crusade to repeal Obamacare, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has betrayed the residents of Kentucky—so says the former Republican senator from the Bluegrass State who gave McConnell his first job in politics.

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Having decades ago embraced the young McConnell partly because he was a fellow moderate Republican, Cook is mystified by his former staffer's journey to the right. "I am absolutely amazed he became a conservative," Cook, now 87 years old, says. And he is aghast that McConnell is a fierce advocate of killing President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. "If he had any knowledge of the lack of health and medical facilities in the hills of Kentucky," Cook says, "he'd know it's a problem we need to solve. For Mitch McConnell to decide the new health program is not good for Kentucky—it tells me he's not looking out for his own constituency." Cook notes that the Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, has been "tremendously successful" in signing up thousands of Kentucky citizens for health insurance under Obamacare.

"I don't know what Mitch is doing," Cook says. "If he thinks this whole thing should be killed, it's an awful crap shoot. Instead of stopping {Obamacare}, they should be correcting the things in the bill that need correcting. But to say it should be killed? I know what the real, real conservative Republicans want. They would love to get rid of Medicare. They would love to get rid of Social Security."

In 2004, two weeks before the election, Cook wrote an op-ed for the Louisville Courier-Journal endorsing Democrat John Kerry, noting he was disgusted by the "Iraq fiasco" and "our staggering debt." He insisted he remained a Republican.

"I don't mind someone being a conservative," Cook remarks. "But to stand up and say, 'I'm the most conservative leader of the Senate ever'? Mitch did that, and I thought, 'My god.'….I don't have the vaguest idea how he has come to the point he has come." But Cook does add, "If there is one thing Mitch is, he's a remarkable politician."