Paul Begala: People Voted For Gridlock

There’s a good case to be made that people voted for more gridlock in yesterday’s election.

Paul Begala, a former consultant to President Clinton, made that case.

According to him:

“One lesson from the 2014 midterms: Voters love gridlock.”

The Mitch McConnell victory “is not only a victory for McConnell. It is a victory for gridlock and extreme partisanship.”

It was McConnell, after all, who told the National Journal in 2010, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President.”

He states that after the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut, McConnell vowed to fight “tooth and nail” to block any effort by the President to impose restrictions, including stiffening background checks on gun purchases.

The gun safety law, of course, garnered overwhelming public support; 92% of gun owners supported universal background checks. But thanks to McConnell, the National Rifle Association and its allies were able to defeat the measure.

Begala states, “It was pure McConnell: audacious, partisan, ugly — but successful. It was a strategy McConnell repeated again and again as Obama initiatives crashed into McConnell’s wall of obstructionism.”

“In their wisdom, the voters of the commonwealth of Kentucky have chosen to reward that partisanship and obstructionism. I accept that and honor that. But please don’t tell me voters don’t like partisanship and obstruction in Washington; they just re-elected the king of gridlock.”

Welcome to Mitch McConnell’s world.