
Mitch McConnell made headlines for -once again- caring more about polling numbers than good policy. He saw the fight to defund Planned Parenthood heading his way, and already he is hiding from the fight in the proverbial nurse’s office.
The Washington Examiner reports:
The Senate Republican leadership gave its strongest signal yet that they will not attach a provision to defund Planned Parenthood to critical government spending legislation in September.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters Thursday that he has learned a lesson from past attempts by the GOP to try to use spending legislation as leverage to win concessions on other issues, and it has backfired politically.
“We’ve been down this path before,” McConnell said. “This is a tactic that has been tried going back to the ’90s and it always has the same ending — that the focus is on the government shutdown and not on the underlying issue that is being protested.”
McConnell declined to say specifically that a provision to defund Planned Parenthood would be excluded from the bill, but he strongly suggested it wouldn’t be part of the equation.
“We intend to continue to pursue the facts, and we’ll look for other opportunities to make our voices heard on Planned Parenthood.”
I think McConnell may have gotten a little confused…. it’s the job of citizens to make their voices heard on the Planned Parenthood videos, which they have. It is the job of Congress to pass laws that represent the voices of those outraged citizens.
If a Republican-controlled House and Senate can’t manage to defund a criminal organization who has been implicated in at least 5 videos of trafficking fetal body parts, then seriously, what can they do? Can they do anything?
A Senate vote to defund Planned Parenthood failed 53-46 earlier this week.