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[CHS notes:  The fabu Cliff Schecter will join us, along with the scintillating TRex, for a very special edition of this week's Book Salon.  Do NOT miss it, Sunday at 5 pm ET/2 pm PT.]

If you've done any reading about Mitch McConnell throughout his 22 years as a U.S. Senator, then what happened to the ethics legislation that initially failed to pass the Senate the other day will come as no surprise to you.

That is unless you are catatonic. Or David Broder. Same difference..

I worked against Senator McConnell in 2002 (for a very poor faux-centrist candidate, sadly), and have researched his career since, for two articles on this Orville Redenbacher-resembling, right-wing loon. I co-wrote  a longer piece in the Washington Monthly on Senate Minority Leader McConnell's bare-knuckle partisanship and atavistic outlook in Congress, with co-editor Zachary Roth, and penned an additional article on his role in building a DeLay like machine in Kentucky over the past two decades based on corporate cash and Machiavellian maneuvering. We realized he might be even more dangerous in the minority, as roadblocks to reform are his specialty.

Like Mel Gibson with a fifth of Scotch set loose on a Kibbutz, dangerous. It appears we were right.

Here are some key passages that may be of interest to you. From the piece on McConnell in DC:

That someone with McConnell’s political style stands to assume what is arguably the third-most-powerful elected post in the federal government speaks volumes about the state of the contemporary Republican Party—and about Washington in general. McConnell is a staunch conservative and a master of procedure, but no piece of landmark legislation bears his name. Almost the only issue on which he has a national profile is campaign-finance reform, and on that, he’s known as the man who fought it at every turn. Republican strategist Grover Norquist—who once compared bipartisanship to date-rape and played a key role in creating the system that uses corporate money to maintain Republican control—told us that if he could pick the president, McConnell would be among his top three choices. (Jeb Bush would be another, and Norquist was uncharacteristically coy about the third.)

And from the article on McConnell in Kentucky:

Over the last 20 years, he has inserted himself into almost every significant Kentucky political race from governor to, well, student body president, ensuring that almost all major GOP elected officials in the state owe their success in large part to him.

The point is, the ethics legislation that was scuttled the other day by the GOP was classic McConnell, using a poison pill attachment (slightly different from a Ted Haggard attachment) that he doesn't really care a damn about–the line-item veto–to unravel any coalition that may favor reform. He's done it succesfully for years in blocking real campaign finance reform (it allowed him to water down McCain-Feingold even when it was passed).

McConnell operates on one principle. Power. For him. For his cronies. For it's own sake. And as Zach and I pointed out in that main piece in October, Democrats had best prepare themselves for this, or they will see alot of legislation go down to the threats, smears and parliamentary procedures all willfully employed by Senator Addison Mitchell McConnell.

***Cliff Schecter regularly blogs at http://cliffschecter.blogspot.com/