What Inslee said to provoke the Wrath of Moron

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26. McTurtle heard the call.

Mitch McConnell: The Man Who Sold America

After 40 years of scorched-earth politics and bowing to special interests, will Mitch McConnell finally pay the price?

By BOB MOSER
Rolling Stone, Sept. 2017

Excerpt...

His first taste of political triumph came at an even younger age. And the way he managed it would set the tone for everything that came later. As a junior at Louisville’s Manual High School, McConnell decided to run for student-body president. The hitch, as he confessed to his mother earlier in high school, was that “I don’t have even one friend.” As he recounted in his 2016 memoir, The Long Game, McConnell set out to make his lack of popularity irrelevant — by manipulating those who had it.

“Just like Kentucky candidates today seek the endorsement of the Louisville Courier-Journal,” he wrote, “I began to seek the endorsement of the popular kids, like Janet Boyd, a well-known cheerleader; Bobby Marr, the best high school pitcher in the state; and Pete Dudgeon, an All-City Football player. I was prepared to ask for their vote using the only tool in my arsenal, the one thing teenagers most desire. Flattery.”

McConnell ran a relentless campaign and vanquished his well-liked opponent. And “having had my first taste of the responsibility and respect that came with holding elected office,” he wrote, “I was hooked.”

As an undergraduate at the University of Louisville, and a law student at the University of Kentucky, McConnell would further hone his skills in winning student-body presidencies. In the 1960s, he worked as an intern to Kentucky Rep. Gene Snyder, a hardcore segregationist. But McConnell’s brand of Republicanism — he’d chosen the party because his father fought under Dwight Eisenhower in World War II — was more moderate. Young Mitch was gung-ho for civil rights. In 1963, while an undergraduate, McConnell spoke at a university rally, urging students to join Martin Luther King Jr. in marching to the state capitol. That same year, he wrote an op-ed urging Republicans to eschew the “constitutional” arguments that Barry Goldwater and other conservatives cited as reasons to oppose the Civil Rights Act. “One must view the Constitution as a document adaptable to conditions of contemporary society,” McConnell wrote. Any “strict interpretation” of the founding document was “inherently evil” if it meant that “basic rights are denied to any group.”

In his first bid for office, in 1977, McConnell challenged the Democratic incumbent for Jefferson County judge executive — basically, the official in charge of Greater Louisville’s government. He courted women’s groups by supporting abortion rights, and promised unions that he’d press for collective-bargaining rights for public workers. But for the first time, he also showed how willing he would be to cast aside principles. “Forced busing” had recently been imposed by the courts to desegregate Louisville’s public schools, and McConnell ran in opposition to it; the former civil-rights champion was now pandering to white voters’ anxieties and resentments.

In that first race, he also gave a glimpse of the kinds of campaign tactics he’d use for the next 40 years. McConnell was never much good when it came to mixing with folks on the campaign trail, but he had no compunction about asking big donors for money. They were the popular kids he’d now be using for his own ends. Raising $355,000 for the race, well beyond any amount ever spent in Jefferson County, he hired a top ad maker and pollster. With their help, McConnell zeroed in on the vulnerabilities of his opponent, Todd Hollenbach. He blew up some minor ethical lapses into darkly ominous controversies. And because Hollenbach was going through a divorce, McConnell’s ads were full of smiling family images of the Republican newcomer, his wife, and his daughters. (McConnell’s first wife, who went on to become a noted feminist scholar, divorced him in 1980.) Decades later, Hollenbach was still fuming about McConnell’s tactics, bitterly telling The New York Times Magazine, “He’s whatever he needs to be for the occasion.”

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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/mitch-mcconnell-man-who-sold-america-880799/