Damn you ferdia, i checked for obits and found nothing.

This is another of my long read fire-and-forget posts. If interested, read on, if not interested, move along. and no, he is not dead yet.

I'm thinking he is getting old now and wanted to post this before he died.

This post was edited by ferdia on Oct 2 2025 06:30am

i read it, its quite well thought out.

i do have a follow up question, where in the timeline do you estimate Mitch's shift towards punishing disloyalty was? and as it was presumably post 2016 when Trump won do you think it was at least somewhat justified given the disaster that any party disloyalty may have posed because of the fierce opposition to Trump's entire first term agenda that democrats called for?

to phrase it in context 2016 trump wins, and between 2016 and 2018 they had a short window before midterms to get anything legislative done. but dropping votes of GOP members who side with Dems would have resulted in no progress and relegated the president to executive orders.

also in reality that's largely what happened anyways, because there were enough never trumpers willing to take on Mitch and enough legal challenges to Trump that very little legislative progress was made anyways.

Donald Trump had nothing to do with this strategy. He simply ended up swimming in its environment. The strategy of punishing Republican disloyalty was firmly established by 2009, long before 2016, with the case of Senator Arlen Specter serving as the defining example.

The critical event was the 2009 vote on President Obama's stimulus bill. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell demanded unified Republican opposition. When Senator Specter broke ranks to provide a key vote, the party's response was immediate and severe. Powerful conservative groups mobilized against him, making his re-election as a Republican impossible.

Facing certain defeat, Specter was forced to switch parties. His defection was a direct result of being purged for compromise.

This incident institutionalized McConnell's "no compromise" doctrine. It sent a clear warning that working with Democrats was a punishable offense, establishing this enforcement of loyalty seven years before the 2016 election. Donald Trump is a consequence, not a cause.

This post was edited by ferdia on Oct 2 2025 07:28am

No one with a moral compass cares about Mitch McConnell.

I am not asking you to care about him, I am highlighting how the US political framework was destroyed by him, and reshaped into what it is today.

interesting

you hear about newt contributing to this sort of thing as well

The notion that government gridlock was a mastermind idea of mitch mcconnel is one of the most hilariously clueless notions I have ever heard.

Before Mitch, everyone on capital hill just worked bipartisanly, huh?

Bro is having mini strokes walking around the capitol building
He can't simply just retire and cease ruining people's lives

I can post more to support the notion, if you really want.

The political strategy that would define America's path to hyper-polarization was cemented in 2005 with the fate of the "Gang of 14." This bipartisan group of seven Republican and seven Democratic senators famously struck a deal to avert a procedural crisis over judicial nominations, temporarily preserving Senate tradition over partisan warfare. However, their act of compromise was treated as an act of betrayal by the party's hardliners.

As the Republican Whip, Mitch McConnell was a leading critic of the deal. While he didn't personally purge each member, the political system he helped build exacted a heavy toll. The seven Republicans faced immediate and severe backlash from their base, leading to a stark warning for the entire party. Some, like Lincoln Chafee and Mike DeWine, were swiftly defeated in their next elections. Others, like John Warner and Olympia Snowe, chose retirement, acknowledging the center had collapsed. Most tellingly, Lindsey Graham underwent a dramatic conversion from maverick to loyalist, a stark lesson in political survival.

This episode institutionalized the "McConnell Doctrine": bipartisan compromise is a career-ending liability, and total party loyalty is the only safe path. The destruction of the Gang of 14's Republicans sent an unambiguous message that eradicated the party's moderate wing and reshaped its incentives. This domestic doctrine of punishing disloyalty and refusing cooperation did not remain in Washington; it ultimately became the blueprint for a confrontational U.S. foreign policy, proving that the tactics which broke American politics at home would eventually be projected onto the world stage.

This post was edited by ferdia on Oct 24 2025 01:12pm