Mitch McConnell.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is getting it on all sides for his latest debt ceiling maneuver, a temporary fix to avoid the Treasury Department's Oct. 18 deadline for hitting the borrowing limit. (All 50 Democrats and 11 Republicans in the Senate took that deal Thursday night.) Liberals still view the Kentucky Republican as a hostage-taker, jeopardizing the country's credit rating to score political points ahead of the midterm elections. Conservatives and former President Donald Trump have slammed him for caving, granting a short-term debt limit solution with no concrete trades from Democrats.

McConnell's triangulation here is more clever than either set of critics admits. He's a savvy political operator who got his only spending concessions from the Obama administration through debt ceiling brinkmanship a decade ago. But he also saw his fiscal responsibility — which, as with many Republicans, seems selective, as deficits and debt only are treated as urgent matters when Democrats hold power — painted as irresponsible when the risk of default loomed. In one such episode in 2011, the uncertainty led Standard & Poor's to downgrade the federal government's credit rating.

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.