Mitch McConnell and GOP called out for hypocrisy, bribes for siding with Wall Street banks

Mitch McConnell has been making floor statements all week, criticizing the Administration plan to break up banks deemed "too big to fail", in an effort to avoid another near meltdown and the bailout that followed it.

This has put the GOP in an uncomfortable position. Always anti-regulation, Republicans have backed themselves into a corner: do they support government regulation of the banking industry to prevent another wipeout, or do they stand with the banks?

The answer has seemed to be, at least for leadership in the GOP, stand with the banks. This is not a popular decision.

Huff Post

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is "unabashedly courting Wall Street bankers for political money" and "happy to scratch their backs if they'll scratch his," opines McConnell's hometown newspaper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, in an unusually strong rebuke.

In a staff editorial headlined "McConnell to big banks' rescue," the Herald-Leader decries McConnell's pandering to Wall Street executives and repeated use of the catch phrases outlined in an anti-financial reform memo written by pollster Frank Luntz.

Here's part of the Herald-Leader's outrage:

Lexington Herald-Reader

McConnell's statements are perfectly calibrated to inflame the public. He insists the bill would "allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks."

Their resemblance to the truth is another matter.

...
McConnell, it should be remembered, voted for the bailout of the big investment banks in the fall of 2008, when it was the only alternative to global economic meltdown.

We have read that the Republicans have a plan for financial reform, but McConnell isn't talking up any solutions, just trashing the other side's ideas with no respect for the truth.

While the intricacies of financial regulation are complicated, McConnell's calculus is pretty obvious.

And here's Rachel with a takedown: