As the Republican party continues to struggle to find a voice to match that of President Obama, Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell is doing everything he can to elevate the president's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility into a winning issue for the GOP.
"For the past several weeks, Republicans in Congress have expressed serious concerns about the administration's insistence on closing Guantanamo before it has a safe alternative," McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor this morning. "These concerns are real . . . and yet all we've gotten from the administration on this issue is silence."
That address was McConnell's 11th on the subject of Gitmo since mid-March, a drumbeat that the Kentucky senator has supplemented with an
op-ed in the Washington Post on the subject and a series of television appearances and speeches -- including
one at the CPAC conference in late February in which McConnell said the Obama administration "needs to show it's more concerned with safety than with symbolism."
So much focus on the issue by one of the most powerful men in the party is not an accident but rather a concerted campaign to rally the party's base behind an idea -- protecting the homeland -- rather than around any one individual.
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McConnell's consistent and persistent messaging on Guantanamo has divided Congressional Democrats and put President Obama on defense," argued GOP consultant Alex Conant. "The Leader's efforts show that the minority's message can break through even in the middle of Obama's honeymoon."
