LEXINGTON, Ky. – Political campaigns aren't generally associated with specificity or truth-telling and political debates are no different. But at Monday night's debate in Lexington, both Senator Mitch McConnell and his Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky Secretary of State, reached absurd heights in the art of weasel-wording.
Ms. Grimes knew the question was coming, since she's fielded it several times in the last few days. The host of the debate, Bill Goodman, asked Ms. Grimes for whom she'd voted in the 2012 presidential election. I'll take a wild guess here that Ms. Grimes, a Democrat who was a member of the Kentucky delegation to the Democratic National Convention two years ago, went for the Democrat: Barack Obama.
But she refused to say — because she's petrified of being linked with the president, who is deeply unpopular in Kentucky. Instead, she took umbrage on the grounds that the Kentucky constitution guarantees ballot box secrecy. She actually made the preposterous claim that by ducking the question she was standing on constitutional principle.
Mr. McConnell then made her look foolish by freely sharing his votes in the 2008 and 2012 presidential contests, as well as in the 2010 Senate race, when he voted for Trey Grayson, who lost to Rand Paul, the Tea Party darling.
Mr. McConnell, who's been in Washington long enough —30 years — to know how to speak without communicating any information, had plenty of opportunity to show off his considerable obfuscation skills.
Is the minimum wage a living wage, Mr. Goodman asked Mr. McConnell. "It's an entry-level wage," said Mr. McConnell, hardly an answer.
Is climate change real? Before he could plead that he was "not a scientist," Mr. Goodman pointed out that although the senator was not an economist, he was willing to share his opinions on the economy. In a tight spot, Mr. McConnell said: "There are a bunch of scientists who feel there is a problem and maybe we can do something about it."
Lest he be accused of siding with environmentalists, he added the caveat that scientists in the 1970s thought we were moving toward an ice age, and closed by declaring that his job, as United States Senator from Kentucky, was to fight for coal jobs in the state.
Mr. McConnell approached Ms. Grimes's "ballot box secrecy"-level of absurdity when Mr. Goodman asked him if "Obamacare and Kynect" had been "a boon or bane" for the state. The difficulty for Mr. McConnell is that the Affordable Care Act is politically toxic in Kentucky, while Kynect — which is the state's health insurance program created under the Affordable Care Act — is a runaway success.
Mr. McConnell's attempt to separate the two made no sense. The Affordable Care Act should be "pulled out root and branch." As for Kynect, that's just "a website. It was paid for by a grant. The website can continue."
Seeking clarity, Mr. Goodman asked if Mr. McConnell would support the continuation of Kynect. "Yeah, I think it's fine to have a website, yeah," said the senator.
That's like saying that Google should cease to exist but that Google.com should live on.
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