Big Government Mitch McConnell Fearing Conservatives Hires A Character Witness

Could there be two more polar opposites in Republican politics than Congressman Ron Paul and Senator Mitch McConnell?

Mitch McConnell is the ultimate Washington insider. McConnell began his political career as an intern on Capitol Hill and for almost 30 years has steeped himself in the art of compromise and deal-making as he steadily worked his way up the Senate GOP hierarchy. As Senate Republican leader, McConnell is the kind of “Richard Lugar Republican” that Tea Partiers and movement conservatives tend to think should be replaced.

Ron Paul has been the GOP’s lone warrior, who for some three decades has trod an almost solitary path urging the Party to become more libertarian and constitutionalist. Despite occasional stumbles, such as endorsing Alaska’s big spending earmarker Don Young for re-election, Ron Paul has maintained a singular devotion to his principles.

Which makes the whole idea that Jesse Benton -- Senator Rand Paul’s campaign manager and chairman of Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign -- would play the same role for Senator McConnell seem preposterous.

The match between McConnell and Benton is particularly odd given that Capitol Hill’s establishment Republicans, especially on the Senate side, know only one way of winning elections: raise a lot of money from special interests and buy a lot of negative ads on TV. This is the exact opposite of how Ron and Rand Paul sustained their grassroots campaigns.

Of course, one of the great things about America is that there is a largely free market for labor and we are all entitled to pursue our own economic interest and sell our services to the highest bidder. This is what Mr. Benton has apparently done in this article for The Daily Caller.

Judging by the content of the article, one of the things Senator McConnell has hired Mr. Benton to do is to try to convince conservatives and Tea Partiers that McConnell is really a conservative who doesn’t deserve the kind of primary challenge that establishment GOP Senators Richard Lugar and Orrin Hatch received this election cycle.

To paraphrase Sky Masterson, the Marlon Brando character in the movie Guys and Dolls, “Jesse, don’t pour cider in my ear and tell me its raining.”

Mitch McConnell is no conservative, and his tendency to craft insider deals to try to finesse hard votes on issues with clear conservative principles at stake, such as raising the debt ceiling, is one of the primary reasons that Capitol Hill Republicans are held in such low regard by the American public – and especially by Tea Partiers and grassroots conservatives.

Furthermore, what Benton describes as McConnell’s “unrepentant” advocacy for the people of Kentucky is really Senator McConnell’s lifelong practice of bribing the voters of Kentucky with earmarks and pork barrel spending to be repaid by future generations of American taxpayers.

Mitch McConnell opposed both Marco Rubio and Rand Paul in their primary elections. Now he feels the hot breath of the voters who swept them into office and has decided to hire someone from Ron Paul’s organization to help him fend off the expected challenge and to serve as a character witness for him with conservatives.

If there is one thing Mitch McConnell and the establishment Republican leadership of Capitol Hill have shown since the 2010 election, it is that they are still not willing to fight for small government constitutional principles. Senator McConnell’s decision to hire one guy to run his re-election campaign, who may or may not be a small government constitutional conservative at heart, doesn’t change that.