Mitch McConnell: For the LULZ

by evanmcmurry

This guy’s always on:

Look, shutting down the government, in my view, is not conservative policy. I don’t think a two-week paid vacation for federal employees is conservative policy.

Two week paid vacation, amiright? Nailed it!

In all seriousness, McConnell just stepped on a legitimate cause of the GOP’s tactical shambling, namely the extent to which awful conservative policy is rooted in the average Republican’s disdain for federal employees as personifications of the bureaucracy they claim to hate (but always expand when in power). Viewing the people—and they are people!—who work for the government as entitled slugs enables disastrous decisions like a gratuitous government shutdown; it’s much easier to capriciously shutter an institution when you think of its 800,000 employees who have bills to pay as getting hammock time. The above line, quoted by Chris Cillizza as an indicator of McConnell’s strategic comprehension, is ideological delusion masquerading as self-awareness.