This may have started out like a grandmaster trolling exercise from Cocaine Mitch. Today, though, Mitch McConnell has begun to sound veeeerrrryyyyy serious in his courtship of Joe Manchin in the wake of the collapse of the BBB. How serious? Take a listen to McConnell’s interview with our friend and Salem colleague Hugh Hewitt this morning: Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman tweeted that this looks more like “saber rattling,” but noted that an offer for a chair puts this a bit beyond trolling status. Manchin currently chairs the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, a post from which he can protect West Virginia’s coal and other energy industries from getting wiped out by a Green New Deal. Currently, John Barrasso serves as the ranking member and would ascend to the chair if the GOP flipped the Senate back to their control. Barrasso would almost certainly make room, but he’d have to get something in return. He might want the chair of Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which is currently chaired by Patty Murray with the retiring Richard Burr as ranking member. Being a physician, that might be a perfect fit. although he’s not currently on the committee and another physician (Bill Cassidy) is next in rank. There are other committees to offer Barrasso, though, not to mention that his own leadership ambitions rest largely on winning the majority at some point.
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“Why in the world would they want to call him a liar and try to hotbox him and embarrass him?” Mr. McConnell, who is just one Senate seat away from regaining the majority leader title, asked in an interview. “I think the message is, ‘We don’t want you around.’ Obviously that is up to Joe Manchin, but he is clearly not welcome on that side of the aisle.” …
Mr. McConnell seemed to see the clash over the spending measure as potentially providing a new opening for a party switch that would both restore him as majority leader and shift the ground in Washington. And he is also not against stirring up trouble for Democrats however and whenever he can.
“Obviously we would love to have him on our team,” said Mr. McConnell. “I think he’d be more comfortable.”
Thanks for that breakdown. I don't keep up as much with all the ins and outs of Congressional politics anymore. It makes my head hurt trying to follow all that drama. Interesting take on a possible power play by the old Turtle and the musical chairmanship it would cause. However, Cocaine Mitch much prefers to negotiate from the minority party position, so I have to wonder what he would gain by bringing Manchin onboard if that were possible. If Manchin switches, he also would lose some of his negotiating power with the Dems. You better believe they were all doing backflips and offered him all kinds of pork goodies for West Virginia just to get him onboard. I really thought he would finally cave after getting what he could so the fact that he has taken a hardline position surprised me. Maybe he got a look at some of the stuff actually in this bill and said no way regardless of how much they offered him. What is being called building infrastructure has nothing to do with highways - it is social justice and election rigging infrastructure through payoffs, not to mention all the green energy infrastructure legislation and spending that would kill his state's energy industry. So, I do see how giving Manchin a chairmanship on such an important committee would give Manchin the motivation to jump a sinking ship - especially if they thought it is all going to flip in the midterms anyway.