Mitch McConnell's Campaign Manager Somehow Keeps His Job After Saying He Can't Stand McConnell's Old Man Stank

On Thursday, a tape surfaced of Mitch McConnell's reelection campaign manager describing his job as an unpleasant way to mark time until he can help Rand Paul run for President. Jesse Benton, who managed Paul's 2010 Senate campaign, was recorded in January by conservative activist Dennis Fusaro, and said

"Between you and me, I'm sorta holding my nose for two years ... 'cause what we're doing here is gonna be a big benefit to Rand in '16."

You'd think that sort of thing might result in a desk being cleaned out at Yertle's Command Center For All He Surveys. Instead, it resulted in the photo above going up on the campaign's Facebook page. See, we're all friends, just joking, and no big deal that my campaign manager just said he can barely stand me.

Benton was of course very, very upset at being taken out of context or something, and issued a statement that he is in fact the most loyal nose-holder evar :

"It is truly sick that someone would record a private phone conversation I had out of kindness and use it to try to hurt me," he said in the statement. "I believe in Senator McConnell and am 100 percent committed to his re-election. Being selected to lead his campaign is one of the great honors of my life and I look forward to victory in November of 2014."

The internal chaos at Casa Galapagos will probably be helpful for Matthew Bevin, McConnell's tea-party primary challenger, as well as for his Democratic opponent, state Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes; there's a bit of a downside, however, says TPM's Josh Marshall:  the more distracted the Senate Minority Leader is by discord in his campaign, and the more he tries to run to the right, the better the chances that tea party loons will push through agovernment shutdown to "stop Obamacare" and, oh, by the way, wreck the economy a little more. So there's that.

Poor Mitch McConnell. Stuck between his own loathsomeness and a hard-right place.

[ TPM / EconomicPolicyJournal ]