The Wall Street Journal Goes After Mitch McConnell

The Wall Street Journal is now joining the Washington Times and other national conservative-leaning news outlets that are committed to outing the hypocrisy of the Louisville liberal Mitch McConnell. With the Club for Growth leading the way, Mitch McConnell will finally be called out for his irresponsible tax and spend agenda:

Asked by CNBC's Larry Kudlow last week about earmarks, GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell replied that, "Well, there certainly have been some bad earmarks in the past. But you've got to remember, you can knock out all the earmarks, and it wouldn't save any money."

Well, $7.4 billion is real money where we come from, and that misses the way in which earmarks have become opportunities for corruption (felon Duke Cunningham) and an incentive for logrolling that increases overall spending. Mr. Bush and the GOP can take one more step toward restoring their fiscal credentials by striking a blow against "nonlegislative" earmarks.

Hinderaker: McConnell Throwing Away Heritage To Join Unethical Democrats

Leading Republican commentator John Hinderaker of Powerline blog wrote an important piece today highlighting Mitch McConnell's refusal to see how ethics problems are ruining the Republican Party's election hopes. As if Tom DeLay, Mark Foley, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, and Conrad Burns were not enough in 2006, now Mitch McConnell is conspiring with Harry Reid to allow Ted Stevens to keep his committee assignments while the Democrat leader is prolonging this embarrassment to the GOP and running laps around the Louisville liberal. Now Mitch McConnell is going to give the Democrats another victory by giving them the allusion of strength in passing a bill that is nothing but a condemnation of the Republican Party:

The "ethics reform bill" now making its way through Congress marks the end, for now at least, of any serious effort to reform the earmark process. This is a sad thing for the Republican Party. Through all of modern history, up until the last two or three years, the Republicans were the party of clean government. It was the Democrats who were associated with bribes, corruption, machine politics, and so on. The idea that the current Republican leaders in Congress--I am thinking especially of Mitch McConnell--are willing to throw away this heritage, and join with the Democrats in suppressing any serious effort at reform--is profoundly depressing.