Mitch McConnell’s N.R.A. Moment

What on earth was Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, perhaps soon to be Senate Majority Leader, doing this morning when he walked onstage at a conservative gathering in Washington brandishing a musket rifle above his head, John Wayne-style?

Was he sending a message to Vladimir Putin? You Russkies might show off your weaponry in Crimea, but we Americans get to do it right here at home, at the annual CPAC conference. Or perhaps the seventy-two-year-old Kentucky stalwart was trying to outdo the previous speakers, who included Senator Ted Cruz, the 2016 hopeful, and congressman Paul Ryan, the right’s designated hitter when it comes to rationalizing tax cuts and government cutbacks.

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