Good For Mitch McConnell: Senate Minority Leader Responds To Awful Racist Remarks About His Wife

Progress Kentucky, a liberal PAC working to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the 2014 midterm elections, gave every Democrat in the country a bad name with it’s horribly racist attack on McConnell’s Chinese-American wife, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao. Now, the Senator is justifiably firing back.

Progress Kentucky made the horrible, false claim that the Taiwanese-born Chao purposefully wanted to send American jobs overseas. And that she is convincing her powerful husband to follow the same agenda. Questioning Chao’s patriotism because of her Asian heritage is simply racist, and it’s the type of thing that no one in this country should have to put up.

The worst thing from my liberal perspective is that now, McConnell gets to talk about the awful racist opposition to him, instead of defending his actual Senate record in the upcoming election. Responding to the comments, McConnell told CNN‘s Candy Crowley,

“Well, it’s happened before. The chairman of the Democratic Party a few years back engaged in the same kind of thing. My wife is a proud Chinese-American. As you know, she was secretary of labor during the Bush administration. Her family escaped from the communists in mainland China, made their way to America and lived the American dream. For that racial slurs by Democrats in Kentucky, it goes with the turf at home, we expect a spirited race. There’s a lot of left wingers around the country who believe 2014 race in Kentucky is the only race of national significance and they would love to take out the Republican leader of the Senate. We’ll be ready for them.”

The fact that McConnell can characterize racism as “going with the turf,” is a disgrace. It’s an insult to all liberals and Democrats and it should be denounced as such. If Democrats want any chance at actually unseating the Republican leader of the Senate, they need to make it clear that such comments against McConnell’s wife (or anyone else) will not be tolerated.

Political families have been open to scrutiny for decades now, with Ann Romney and Michelle Obama receiving their fair share of criticism during the last election cycle. But racism shouldn’t be tolerated no matter who it is directed at. The fact that it was thrown at the Minority Leader’s wife only makes the situation more disgraceful.

There are ignorant people on both sides of the aisle and they will make ignorant comments. But those with more sense, more thoughtfulness and more honor should stand up and denounce that ignorance when they see it. Liberals should all be making sure that we communicate just how despicable we find those types of attacks and the sentiment behind them.

I don’t agree with Senator McConnell on plenty of things. But here, he and his wife have my full support. And hopefully, Democrats in Kentucky will make it clear that they don’t want Progress Kentucky’s support of advocacy after such a hateful, bigoted comment.