Addison
Mitchell McConnell Jr., on government payrolls all his life, is now the tenth richest Senate member, with a reported fortune somewhere between $9,839,049 and
$44,587,000 in 2010.
In four
years he has transformed the Upper House into a minority-deadlocked filibuster machine
devoted to “the single most important thing we want to achieve...President
Obama to be a one-term president.”
Failing
that, McConnell is still ferociously blockading government at the fiscal cliff,
even as rational Republicans begin to abandon his lost cause.
McConnell’s
time as a D.C. tyrant is clearly running out, but would a movie star (pace Ronald Reagan) make a suitable
replacement? The surprising answer is that, compared to the Gipper when he
entered elected politics, Ashley Judd looks like Winston Churchill.
Two
years ago, she earned a master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of
Government after enrolling “to immerse myself in some very serious, earnest,
practical learning with people who have literally dedicated all they have to
public service.”
Her
enrollment followed years of political activism, which included speeches to the
UN General Assembly about sex-trafficking and to the National Press Club about
strip-mining in her home state of Kentucky as well as serving on the board of
PSI, a global health organization, on such issues as maternal health, family
planning and malaria prevention.
If
she decides to challenge McConnell (and it looks like she will), Ashley Judd
will have to beat back campaign charges that she is just another Hollywood
figure trying to capitalize on fame. But her history would contradict that, and
her Kentucky roots run deep.
As
the daughter of country singer Naomi Judd and sister of Wynonna, the would-be
senator has been enthusiastically involved in the local culture all her life.
No one could accuse her of being a carpetbagger or an Ashley-come-lately.
And
there would always be the added bonus of seeing her face on cable news to
replace the woeful countenance of Mitch McConnell spinning his anti-Obama webs.
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