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Donald Trump is once again sucking all the oxygen out of the air as he goes to trial in New York for paying off a porn star to hide his affair with her from the public just before the 2016 election. 

We know what he did. He doesn’t dispute the affair, only that he did nothing illegal. That’s the way a lecherous man like him thinks. But as bad as Trump is for America, and how disruptive his cult following is, he is hardly the single cause of our political strife.

In point of fact, that honor belongs to Mitch McConnell.

Before Trump even entered politics, and long before he took control of the Republican Party, Mitch McConnell decided to break the Senate, and, in the process, to break our government.

In January of 2009 he used his substantial political power as Senate Minority Leader to persuade the Republican Senate caucus to oppose anything and everything newly inaugurated President Obama proposed regardless of its benefit to the nation.

“No compromise” was McConnell’s mantra in the hope that if he could break the government, Obama would be a one term president. To this end Republicans started using the filibuster rule to block all consequential legislation, allowing only a bare minimum of bills to pass to avoid a complete government shutdown. 

What he did and its continuing after effects today are why American voters must not only defeat Trump in November, but hand the Republican Party a resounding defeat as well.

When Senate Republicans recently followed Trump’s order to refuse to pass the immigration reform bill they themselves negotiated with President Biden, they were not only doing what Donald Trump wanted them to do, they were following the script Mitch McConnell wrote 16 years ago. 

But it is not limited to Republicans in Congress. Last Sunday New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R). told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” that even though he believes Trump contributed to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on our democracy, he plans to vote for him in November anyway.

Think about that.

A sitting Republican governor who has said numerous times that he believes Donald Trump is unfit to be President ever again did not hesitate in saying he will put party loyalty above protecting American democracy by voting for Trump in November. That is today’s Republican Party of no principles Mitch McConnell birthed when he became its Senate leader.

But there’s more to the story.

More than a few Democrats and independent voters are playing right into McConnell’s hands with their political cynicism that has lost all faith in the government working to get anything accomplished.

One of my most unfavorite phrases is, “Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good,” but in this instance that is exactly what cynical progressives are doing. They don’t believe it matters who is in power. We’ve all heard them insist that “they’re all corrupt in Washington,” or, “big money controls everything,” or, “they’re all bought by special interests,” or, “one’s as bad as the other.” 

These are statements arising from a deep-rooted cynicism that naively believes the only way government is worth their support is if the people in it are perfect. That’s how silly and dangerous political cynicism has become today. 

It also contradicts the truth. Meaningful legislation is getting passed in spite of Republican opposition because of the political skills of that old man named Joe Biden. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was young, except, if he were, he wouldn’t have the experience he has to find middle ground with a few Republicans in order to get so much done.

There is no perfect in politics, or in life, for that matter, but there is the good, and that is what the Republican Party is trying to stop because they don’t want Biden to get credit for actually making America great again in the ways that truly count and benefit everyone.

It’s all about power.  

In 1887, Lord Acton, an English historian, observed from his study of history that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

It still does, and the hard truth the nation must face is that if Trump and the Republican Party control our government next year they will use their absolute power to break the government completely so it cannot accomplish any good at all. 

The way that can be avoided, and I suggest the only way, is for American voters to take power away from Republicans, all of them, at every level of government.

For that to happen, though, Republicans upset about what has happened to their party and cynical Democrats must understand that across the board this year’s election is not about being Republican or Democrat.

It’s about being American. 

If you want to know what “America First” really means, it is standing up against those Americans that believe breaking the government so it cannot do anything is the way to go.

Mitch McConnell put that philosophy into play in 2008 that opened the door to the Republican Party becoming so extreme that they now want to replace our form of government entirely with a narcissistic autocrat.

They must be stopped, and taking away their political power is the way to do it.

That will obviously require that some Americans will have to give-up their cynicism that serves no good and vote for people who, as imperfect as they are, want to do as much good as they can.