Mitch McConnell's sellout: Follow the money

Sen. Mitch McConnell has said one of his first priorities as majority leader is to lead the Senate in what Pat Buchanan calls an act of self-castration. McConnell is ready to surrender the Congress' ability to amend the TransPacific Partnership Obama has been negotiating with his corporatist cronies.

Let's be clear: The TransPacific Partnership is not an exotic escort service, nor is it an agency for mail-order Filipino brides. It is a sweeping agreement being secretly negotiated with a dozen countries that would affect everything we eat, every drug we take and every BTU of energy we use. And yet, Sen. McConnell is willing to forgo due diligence and turn Congress into Obama's rubber stamp.

A wag would be forgiven for saying the TransPacific Partnership describes the majority leader's marriage to Elaine Chao. The former Chinese Communist Party boss Jiang Zemin is a close family friend of Elaine Chao's, and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has praised her father for building up China's industry. (Shipping to and from China is the Chao family business.) Lest we forget, Jiang Zemin is the hardliner who took power following the Tiananmen Square massacre and is notorious for repressing religious minorities and Tibetans. Jiang's been indicted for genocide and is fighting to hold on to his corrupt fiefdom in Shanghai. Some friend.

McConnell's rush to support the TransPacific Partnership, even if means giving more power to Obama, is no surprise. McConnell has been one of Washington's strongest supporters of free trade and closer ties with China. While it would be easy to blame his wife, Elaine Chao, for making McConnell a pro-China, pro-free trade shill, it would be wrong.

It would be wrong because President Bill Clinton wasn't married to Elaine Chao when he asked Congress to treat Communist China as a "Most Favored Nation" and make it safe for corporations to move American factories to China. Conservatives warned of China's threat to our national security, but Sen. McConnell ignored these concerns and voted to open the door to more investment in the communist country, just as President Clinton asked.

It would be wrong because Al Gore was married to Tipper, not Elaine, when he took illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals in the Chinagate scandal. John Huang, the man convicted of laundering campaign money for Al Gore, also directed thousands of dollars to McConnell.

It would be wrong because the CEO of Loral Space and Communications aerospace company, Bernard Schwartz, wasn't married to Ms. Chao when his company told China how to improve its intercontinental ballistic missile guidance systems. Schwartz knew he could save money by using Chinese rockets to launch communications satellites into orbit, and he wanted to make sure the rockets didn't crash on takeoff. The Pentagon said the information Loral gave China has placed America at greater risk.

It would be wrong because Hank Greenberg, CEO of AIG insurance, wasn't married to Elaine Chao, either, when he sought to set up shop in China and bought Washington's help to make it happen. Greenberg and his corporate cronies lobbied hard to get Congress to ignore China's record on human rights and national security issues. They shoveled contributions into congressional campaign coffers – Sen. McConnell received tens of thousands of dollars from AIG as well as from 19 of the 20 top contributors to the U.S.-China Business Council. AIG became the first Western insurance company to do business in China and went on to collect $182 billion in the Wall Street bailout.

And neither was George W. Bush married to Elaine Chao when he nominated her to be labor secretary even though, as WND reported, Chinese dissident Harry Wu said, "I worry about Elaine Chao's business relationship with communist China." (Conservative watchdog Judicial Watch raised concerns as well.) In addition to her family friendship with Beijing's Communist bosses, WND reported Chao had ties to the Lippo Group, the company at the center of the Chinagate money-laundering scandal, Protective Life Insurance, which was in partnership with an intelligence-gathering front for the People's Liberation Army, and an Internet company, Multacom, subsequently linked to a notorious Chinese cyber-espionage ring. President Bush wasn't married to her but still remained faithful, even after Secretary Chao told an interviewer U.S. companies aren't moving offshore for cheap foreign labor, but because American workers are sloppy, lack "good personal hygiene" and have "anger-management" issues.

It would be wrong because neither Steve Jobs nor current Apple CEO Tim Cook were married to Elaine Chao when they moved Apple's production from California to Communist China. Apple owes its very existence to research funded by the American taxpayer, but an Apple executive said, "We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems." That executive wasn't married to Elaine Chao, either.

No, the problem with Sen. McConnell's isn't that he's married to Elaine Chao; it's that he's married to the bipartisan Washington-Wall Street establishment that will do anything to stay in power and sees China as a "strategic partner" and money-making opportunity.

McConnell has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Chinese-Americans, many with ties to mainland China, and between $5 million and $25 million from the family linked to Beijing's Red mandarins.

Love is blind, and it's love of money, not a woman, that makes Mitch McConnell and his friends in Washington unable and unwilling to see the threat the TransPacific Partnership and Communist China pose to our people and our nation.