If Mitch McConnell has even a single functioning brain cell left to his name, sequestered away in a D.C. hospital surrounded by Capitol police, he spent this week reading his own obituary -- and it was far from flattering.
As McConnell remains hospitalized for 39 days and counting, following a medical emergency at his D.C. home -- the details of which are murky and only get murkier -- an opinion columnist for the Kentucky senator's own hometown newspaper, the Louisville Courier Journal, penned a fiery pre-obituary, outlining the "detestable" legacy being left behind by the Republican lawmaker.
Columnist Joseph Gerth explained that he penned the 84-year-old congressman's obituary while he's still alive (as far as we know, anyway) in an effort to avoid the backlash that always comes with saying bad things about a recently dead person, as we saw with recently deceased Senator Lindsey Graham: "How dare you say that about a guy who just died?"
In his piece, titled "My too-early 'tribute' to Mitch McConnell," Gerth describes McConnell as "every bit the detestable figure" Richard Nixon was, noting that McConnell will be known for only two things throughout the course of his miserable life and Congressional career: his brazen "manipulation" of the US Supreme Court confirmation process and his blindly devout loyalty to and enabling of Donald J. Trump.
"First is his cynical and hypocritical manipulation of the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation process that over a four-year period shifted the court from a center-right body to a far-right body that overturned 60 years of case law on civil rights and nearly a century of law that empowered Congress to check a President’s power," Gerth scathed, before accusing the senator of having far "more guts as a young man than he had as an old man."
He ripped McConnell to shreds over his "hypocritical" blocking of Obama's Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, claiming that the position should be filled by whoever secured the presidential win in that year's impending election, only to confirm Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett following Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death just EIGHT days before Trump lost the 2020 election.
"McConnell’s shenanigans turned what had been a 5-4 conservative majority — with one member being a reliable swing vote — into a solid 6-3 radical conservative court," Gerth writes. "In the process, McConnell destroyed the court’s credibility with the American people."
In fairness, he did highlight the few positive accomplishments McConnell boasts from his lengthy political career, including his work to increase the size of Louisville's Jefferson Memorial Forest. Still, he noted that those meager accomplishments will ultimately pale in comparison to all of the horrible things the Kentucky senator has done.
Gerth made sure to quote McConnell's own words back at him in his premature obituary, when Mitch referred to Donald Trump as "stupid as well as being ill-tempered," a "despicable human being," and a "narcissist" -- only to tuck tail and fall in line when Trump rose to power.
"And that is the legacy of Mitch McConnell," Gerth wrote.
Happy reading, Mitch.
