By Michael Woyton
Say you were a Democratic governor of a solid red state and one of your United States senators, a Republican, had been MIA for more than a month and wouldn’t respond to a query about his health.
I think that governor should ask, “WWMD?”
Yes, what would Mitch do?
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I assume you aren’t surprised that this is based on a real life-or-death situation happening right now in the state of Kentucky.
Gov. Andy Beshear has said that he has not heard from Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell or his office about the 84-year-old’s, well, aliveness, since he was taken to a hospital June 14.
The governor calls the lack of communication “concerning.” One wonders if he was doing an imitation of Maine Sen. Susan Collins.
“I haven’t heard a thing,” Beshear said Monday. “Not an email, not a letter, not a call, not a video… absolutely nothing.”
He said if someone has been in a hospital for a month, not showing up for work and missing all the Senate votes, that person owes the boss — the public — an explanation.
“It’s been reported that he’s had 20-minute conversations with different individuals, so call into a news station for 5 minutes or put out a short video,” Beshear was quoted by Newsweek as saying.
The governor has even said he got two calls “from separate agencies” saying that octogenarian senator was no longer among the living.
Beshear as governor has the authority to call a special election when a senator dies in office, Daily Beast reported, “prompting several Democratic figures to call on Beshear to get a concrete answer on McConnell’s health — or just call a special election if he cannot.”
So just what would Mitch McConnell do if the roles were reversed?
He sure as hell wouldn’t have waited this long.
McConnell famously blocked Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016 to replace Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for more than 10 months, saying the vacancy shouldn’t be filled until after the next presidential election.
He did a 180 when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died six weeks before the 2020 presidential election by bringing Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Senate and seeing her installed as a justice days before the polls were closed and the votes counted.
In other words, McConnell would not hesitate to do whatever he could get away with, which now seems to be pretending he’s alive until it’s too late to call for a special election which is 63 days before the general — or Sept 1.
Beshear is said to have presidential ambitions.
He needs to step up to the plate and find out whether the 84-year-old public official is still in the land of the living or if he’s received his eternal reward.
Show the people of Kentucky and the U.S. that you can make tough decisions and stop letting Mitch McConnell who has put party above everything else keep screwing over America.
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