Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell obviously hates Donald Trump. It doesn’t matter. Trump is a Republican, McConnell is a Republican, so so McConnell will almost certainly end up endorsing Trump’s presidential run.
Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, will “look past a load of shit” to endorse Donald Trump for president, a GOP colleague said.
“He’ll look past a load of shit to improve the path to the majority,” the senator said, speaking anonymously to the Hill. “That’d be the one reason why Mitch would rise above principle and do the politically expedient thing … because he is hell-bent on getting the majority, and he’ll make personal sacrifices for that.”
The senator was speaking before McConnell announced that he will step down as leader at the end of the year, quitting a post he has held since 2006.
There’s a lot of stuff that goes into the “load of shit” — probably most notably the Jan. 6 insurrection — but for my purposes today I want to focus on a specific element: Trump’s treatment of McConnell’s wife.
Elaine Chao was Trump’s secretary of transportation, but she quit her post right after Jan. 6. Trump’s response has been to lob a lot of racist insults her way over the last few years.
Over the past several months, the leading Republican presidential candidate has launched a series of racist attacks on the wife of the Republican Party’s Senate leader, a woman who once served in his Cabinet.
But while former President Donald Trump’s taunts at Elaine Chao — demeaning her as “Coco Chow” or a variation of Mitch McConnell’s “China-loving wife” — have been mostly met with silence from fellow GOP officials, the main target of them is now speaking out.
“When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name. Asian Americans have worked hard to change that experience for the next generation,” Chao said in a statement to POLITICO. “He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.”
Would you endorse a man who publicly or privately slurred your spouse?
Would you vote for him?
Mitch, of course, is following well-trod territory here. Ted Cruz has spent years abasing himself before Trump, who insulted Cruz’s wife and father when the two were competing for the 2016 GOP nomination. Power comes before pride, I guess.
What makes this so interesting to me is that so much of conservative politics comes down to the assertion of a certain kind of (white) manliness, with a corresponding defense of (white) womanhood. So much anti-trans legislation, for example, is cast as a defense of women. So, often, is anti-abortion legislation. And so is a lot of the political discussion around immigration, crime and guns.
“Womanhood” must be protected. Actual women? No so much.
That’s the only way I can figure that the GOP is so enthusiastic about Donald Trump, found by a court to have sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll. It’s why my state Republican Party is enthusiastically promoting an upcoming appearance by Ted Nugent, who has his own documented history of problems.
Chao, of course, is a GOP stalwart in her own right. She maybe doesn’t need defending, and might even endorse her husband’s almost-certain endorsement of Trump. And I don’t really need to buy into “big man-little woman” sexist stereotyping to criticize Trump and the Republicans who love them.
On the other hand, if you take conservatives on their own terms, you have to ask: Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz won’t protect their own wives from Trump’s verbal attacks. Gary Cooper they ain’t. It’s not the manliest behavior in the world, is it?
What I’m reading
As previously (overly) discussed, I’m not much of a Christian anymore. But I leave the door open for a return to the faith. Why? Well, Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead” is one reason why. I just re-read her novel — the story of a dying Congregationalist minister, writing a letter to his very young late-in-life son, as he grapples with grace and predestination — and it remains one of the most beautiful pieces of fiction I have ever read.
Minor beef. McConnell loves power more than his party or (perhaps) his marriage. Elaine’s a die-hard Republican, after all. He was so determined to remain the longest-tenured leader in history that he trashed his beloved Senate’s ability to wield its authority in the process. A monkey’s paw might have been involved.
It took me three times to finally get through Robinson's "Gilead," and I'm grateful for those previous, failed efforts. It's beauty is primarily found--or at least so I thought--in its intense, close, weighty, perfect identification between the words of the story and the story being told, between the saying and the said. The character of John Ames speaks through Robinson's words on the page in a way that I've never experienced before with any other novel (and which Robinson herself wasn't, I think, fully able to recreate in "Home"); you can feel his faith, his sorrow, his confusion, and his commitment like they're right beside you, even like they're right within you. An incredible book.