McCaskill Says GOP Senate Leader McConnell “Has Lost His Mind”

Politico:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has “lost his mind,” Sen. Claire McCaskill said on “Morning Joe” Thursday.

Speaking of her frustration with Republicans approach on the debt ceiling, the Missouri Democrat said she couldn’t figure out McConnell’s thinking.

“I think Mitch McConnell, frankly, has lost his mind,” she said.

McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday proposed a deal that would allow President Barack Obama to raise the debt limit with congressional approval, requiring three separate votes to do so before the 2012 elections.

Asked by host Joe Scarborough how she would justify her statement to McConnell, McCaskill said: “I would just say Mitch, honestly, with a straight face, do a press conference and say, ‘Here’s the solution to the problem: Let’s let the Democrats do it and we want them to do it three times before the next election and it will be OK with us if they do it as long as we don’t have to touch it.’ And people aren’t ridiculing that? This is when we’re supposed to come together.”

McCaskill, a chief attack dog for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, is now locked in a fierce reelection fight of her own.

“This is when we’re supposed to show the country that we’re capable of governing, not figuring out the best strategy for (McConnell) to become majority floor leader,” she said. “This is all about trying to take out me and other people in tough states so that Mitch can become majority floor leader.”

She called the McConnell plan “brazenly political” and said: “What’s the rationale to make us do it three times? These are the guys have said certainty, certainty, certainty. … “The way he proposed it, it was like putting a big sign around his neck that says, ‘This is all about winning for the Republicans.’”