Not 'Moscow Mitch.' How McConnell stands up to Russia to support Ukraine

As he has done so often in his career, Mitch McConnell proved his detractors wrong last week by dragging President Joe Biden to a better outcome on helping the brave Ukrainians repel their Russian invaders.

The “Moscow Mitch” attack invented by dimwitted MSNBC host Joe Scarborough(and parroted endlessly by Kentucky Democratic Party operatives) was always bunk. Now it just looks ridiculous.

When all was said and done, Congress, with McConnell’s support, passed a $14 billion aide package for Ukraine that more than doubled what Biden originally asked for. And inside of that, Politico reported that the Senate Republican Leader made a call to his Democratic counterpart Chuck Schumer with a simple demand: double the direct military assistance.

“To Chuck’s credit, he said, ‘OK,’” McConnell told Politico. “It wasn’t a hard sell.”

What was to be $1.5 billion in military aide became $3 billion because McConnell believes that Biden’s appeasement and pussyfooting around will invite more Russian aggression.

“American strength is not a provocation. American strength secures deterrence and peace. It is American hesitancy and weakness, which our adversaries see as an invitation. It’s a simple fact. We have re-learned it the hard way many times in our history. It should form the cornerstone of any Administration’s foreign policy,”McConnell said on the Senate floor on Tuesday morning.

McConnell’s current actions are the latest in a long and distinguished career of standing up to the Russians and for NATO, which he calls “the most successful military alliance in the history of the world.”

During the Trump years, it was McConnell who publicly countered the president of his own party on NATO’s utility. When Trump raised the possibility that America would shirk its Article 5 responsibilities to defend NATO members if they were attacked, McConnell was quick to disagree and “reassure our NATO allies that if any of them get attacked, we'll be there to defend them,” a comment he made during the 2016 Republican National Convention.

In 2017, as he was taking office, Trump referred to NATO as “obsolete.” McConnell immediately countered him and said publicly that Russia “is a big problem.”

In 2019, McConnell invited the NATO Secretary-General to address Congress as it celebrated the alliance’s 70th anniversary. CNN reported at the time that McConnell did not consult with Trump’s White House on the invitation, which some viewed as a subtle rebuke of Trump’s NATO badmouthing.

McConnell has been a clear and consistent voice in his party for American strength in the face of Russian aggression. 

But that didn’t stop his political opponents in 2019 from inventing the outrageous “Moscow Mitch” attack that formed in the left-wing fever swamps in the run-up to McConnell’s reelection campaign. It was a literal conspiracy theory with no basis, parroted over and over on MSNBC and by the most popular liberal Twitter trolls. The Kentucky Democratic Party raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in “Moscow Mitch” merchandise via an online store, which still appears on its website.

Voters saw through the ridiculous attack, as McConnell trounced his opponent by 20 points and Republicans romped up and down the Kentucky ballot. And McConnell’s actions today, dragging a lethargic Biden to a more muscular position in bolstering the Ukrainians against the Russians, ought to shame every Democrat and media outlet that repeated the nutty conspiracy theory that one of NATO’s biggest defenders was somehow soft on the Russians.

But I’m not holding my breath. There’s only one party harboring literal socialists among its ranks in America—the Democratic Party. In fact, a Fox News poll taken last August found that “59% of Democratic registered voters…had a positive view of socialism, compared to just 49% who felt that way about capitalism.”

The biggest stars in the Democratic Party are avowed socialists, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. Biden, having joined the radical war on fossil fuels demanded by his base, reached out to the brutal, socialist regime in Venezuela to beg for its oil. Democrats (in January!) defeated Republican efforts to sanction Putin ahead of his move against Ukraine.

But sure, Moscow and Mitch both start with M so let’s run with it, ammiright?

No matter. History will record McConnell as a strong defender of Western civilization, amid the left’s dumb coffee mugs and the right’s unfortunate peanut gallery that seems to revel in pro-Russian contrarianism no matter how stupid it makes them look. McConnell believes America is a force for good in the world, and his actions speak louder than the dumb political rhetoric of fundamentally unserious people.

It isn’t hard to tell right from wrong in Russia’s war against Ukraine. And it shouldn’t have taken President Biden so long to dump his failed appeasement strategy in favor of McConnell’s preferred muscular opposition to the thuggish Putin. 

But America finally landed on a strong anti-Russian posture, even if some of our leaders had to be dragged to it, kicking and screaming.

And Mitch McConnell, the old Kentucky workhorse, was pulling the wagon the entire time.