He’s such a worm:
Senator Mitch McConnell is extending an open invitation to Senator Joe Manchin III — come on over to our side.
Mr. McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, said on Tuesday that he was astonished by the angry response that Mr. Manchin of West Virginia elicited from the White House and his fellow Democrats with his Sunday bombshell that he would oppose President Biden’s signature domestic policy bill.
The Senate, Mr. McConnell noted, is an institution where the most important vote is the next one, leaving the Republican leader perplexed as to what drove Democrats to impugn Mr. Manchin’s integrity by accusing him of reneging on commitments to the president.
“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.”
It is hardly a secret, Mr. McConnell said, that he has wooed Mr. Manchin for years, only to have Mr. Manchin, a lifelong Democrat, resist. And Mr. Manchin this week said he “hoped” there was still a place for him in the party.
Despite his break with Mr. Biden over the sprawling safety net and climate change bill, Mr. Manchin would not be an exact fit for the Republican Party. He is closer to Republicans than Democrats on some flashpoint cultural issues like guns and abortion. But he has a more expansive view than most Republicans of the role of government in social and economic policy. And in both of former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trials, Mr. Manchin voted to convict.
But 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.”
I suspect that even Manchin knows being a “maverick” in a closely divided senate is a lot more fun as a Democrat than a Republican. If he pulled this sort of thing on Mitch McConnell, he’d learn what being bullied really is.
Of course, Mitch doesn’t want to do anything but obstruct Biden and Manchin wouldn’t hav any power to stop him so he’d just be a cipher anyway. Moreover, I don’t think he’d survive a GOP primary with his record on abortion and voting for Trump’s impeachment. So he’ll stick with the Democrats where he can preen and pose and cause the most damage. That’s his thing.
But you have to admire McConnell’s chutzpah. What a troll.
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