I am instituting a new policy here at RedState. In the future, as we support candidates for the U.S. Senate in Republican Primaries, we will not support any candidate who goes on the record supporting Mitch McConnell as Senate Republican Leader.

That does not preclude them from voting for McConnell once they get there if there are no better options. But when looking to endorse candidates, those who express a willingness to support someone else first will certainly be given more attention.

Why?

Well, it is not just that Mitch McConnell is yet again screwing both the Republican Party and the country. He has a history of playing things to his advantage, even when it means hurting the country and his own political party.

If Mitch McConnell will not turn from his history of failed leadership, we must encourage those running for the Senate to turn from McConnell.

Let’s review the tape, shall we?From my 2009 post on McConnell, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America pointed these things out:

Senator Mitch McConnell has lost almost every major legislative battle he has managed.

In the early ’90?s, he managed opposition to the Motor Voter Bill, which encouraged groups like ACORN to register fraudulent voters. McConnell refused to filibuster the motion to take up the bill — something that would have served as a key delaying tactic.

Moreover, Sen. McConnell sat by idly as sponsors of the bill played “let’s make a deal” — offering amendment after amendment to buy off opponents of the bill. A bill, which initially had more than enough votes to kill it, ended up passing because of McConnell’s ill-advised strategy.

A decade later, McConnell managed the opposition to the Incumbent Protection Act a/k/a the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act to take away the free speech rights of Second Amendment groups during heated elections. McConnell threatened and cajoled to prevent Republican senators from offering “killer amendments” to the bill. McConnell explained that he would bring a lawsuit to overturn it in the courts.

Well, after the bill’s passage, McConnell did bring a lawsuit. He lost.

Senate Minority Leader McConnell could once again ended up losing the historic battle against ObamaCare legislation.

Rather than delaying this legislation and allowing the American people the time to continue building opposition against socialized health care, Senator McConnell was all-to-willing to speed the bill along.

Consider what one Republican Senator admitted on the Bill Bennett radio show. When asked what was the Republican strategy for defeating ObamaCare, Senator John Kyl responded: ”Actually, I think we can be fairly upfront about it. Our strategy is not actually to delay [but] to have a lot of good amendments and highlight the problems in the bill. It is not our strategy to somehow slow things down.”

McConnell never pulled out all the stops that he could have.

And now we fast forward to McConnell’s “Pontius Pilate Act.” He wants to give Barack Obama the power to raise the debt limit to over $16 trillion with no obstruction. He, the man who opposed an earmarks ban because it ceded power to the executive given to Congress by the constitution, wants to give Obama power reserved to Congress in the Constitution to raise the debt ceiling.

Mitch McConnell is not a leader. He is a failure. We should stop rewarding failure.