McConnell ad lauds deals; he touts bill for veterans, topic of ad targeting him; Grimes ad gets low mark

A rolling roundup as we head into the weekend . . .

• Sen. Mitch McConnell has started a new TV commercial touting his negotiation of budget agreements as Senate minority leader, with a series of laudatory remarks from a wide range of sources, including liberal commentator Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball."
  
• McConnell, who is being attacked in a TV ad for not supporting a bill to improve veterans' benefits, announced that a bill he co-sponsored to help increase their cost-of-living adjustments has passed the Senate. A press release said he was one of 15 co-sponsors, and voted recently against a reduction in COLAs that was authorized in the December 2013 budget agreement. "He later introduced a measure to reinstate this full benefit and voted for legislation enacted in February 2014 that reinstated the full COLA for all military retirees," the release said.
• Politifact found more fault with a long-running Grimes ad, this time with its assertion that McConnell voted "three times for corporate tax breaks that sent jobs overseas." The fact-checking service of the Tampa Bay Times says the ad is "mostly false" because tax law allowing deductions for business moving expenses does not specifically promote outsourcing, and McConnell cast three procedural votes that blocked bills that "would have given a tax benefit to companies that insource jobs and denied an already-existing tax break to companies that outsource them."
• Grimes criticized McConnell for blocking a proposed constitutional amendment that "would allow Congress and state lawmakers to override recent Supreme Court decisions that have struck down campaign-finance laws," as described by Politico. In a press release, Grimes said "Sen. McConnell remains more concerned about the whims of millionaires and billionaires than Kentuckians struggling to make ends meet. My opponent shamefully admits that the 'worst day' of his political life was not the VA scandal or the Great Recession that saw 118,000 Kentuckians lose their jobs, but rather when Congress decided to limit the money his wealthy friends could give him for re-election."
• Grimes issued another release saying McConnell had a bad week; among the examples were his refusal to disavow the remarks of a fellow speaker at the Koch brothers event in June, who called the minimum wage fascist and unemployed people lazy. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., mentioned the remarks in a speech during the debate on the constitutional amendment.
• The remarks are the focus of a new TV ad attacking McConnell, being run by the liberal group MoveOn.org.
• Grimes has a new web ad, in which voters say "Hey, Mitch," and ask questions about McConnell's voting record.
• On KET's "Comment on Kentucky," WDRB's Lawrence Smith said Grimes released an internal poll to "calm the nerves" of contributors and "blunt momentum McConnell seems to have."
• The Kentucky Senate race is no longer in the list of "Top 10 Senate Takeovers" on NBC News' "First Read." It was No. 8 in mid-July. Could have somethign to do with these trend lines of poll averages as drawn by Real Clear Politics:

Magazine's audio, transcript: McConnell disses wage-floor boost, extra help for student debtors, jobless

A recording of Sen. Mitch McConnell, apparently done in secret, has him disparaging minimum-wage increases, extended unemployment benefits and relief for student-loan debtors, according to The Nation, a liberal magazine that published the barely audible recording and a transcript today.

After discussing his recently revealed plan to attach policy riders to funding bills, to force President Obama to veto them and/or negotiate, McConnell said, according to the transcript:

"We’re not going to be debating all these gosh-darn proposals. That’s all we do in the Senate, is vote on things like raising the minimum wage (inaudible) – cost the country 500,000 new jobs; extending unemployment – that’s a great message for retirees; uh, the student loan package the other day, that’s just going to make things worse, uh. These people believe in all the wrong things."

McConnell was answering questions after speaking June 15 at a California "donor summit" held by Charles and David Koch, brothers who have been two of the leading financiers of conservative causes and Republican campaigns in recent years.

"The main thrust of McConnell’s remarks to the Koch conference were about his pet issue, campaign finance, which he regards as a matter of free speech," Lauren Windsor reports for The Nation. According to the magazine, he said "the worst day of my political life" was when President George W. Bush signed the McCain-Feingold law, "the bill that banned soft money and unlimited donations to party committees," Windsor writes.

"McConnell promised his party’s rich backers that he stands with them, no matter the cost to Kentuckians and this nation," the Alison Lundergan Grimes campaign said in a press release.

The McConnell campaign didn't dispute the transcript, but cast the senator's remarks as no different from his stump speeches and a forthright defense of the coal industry that it said Grimes has been too timid to defend: "Earlier this summer Grimes failed to utter a word of support after promising Kentuckians she would defend Kentucky coal at a Harry Reid fundraiser and lord [sic] knows what she said to Tom Steyer and anti-coal billionaires when she attended their conference in Chicago."

Roundup: Grimes ad says McConnell laughed about the jobless; he meets w/evangelicals; race's ranking slips

So what was he laughing about? Listen for yourself  . . .

• Alison Lundergan Grimes launched her toughest attack ad of the race today, a 30-second spot that says Sen. Mitch McConnell became a multi-millionaire in public office but voted repeatedly against raising the minimum wage and extending unemployment benefits, and for tax breaks that support sending jobs overseas, "and when asked about it, just laughs." The punch line refers to the end of a session McConnell had in January with conservative radio talker Lars Larson, who did not favor McConnell's proposal to extend unemployment benefits in return for a year's delay in the individual health insurance mandate. They sparred about the topic for most of the eight-minute interview, and McConnell said Larson had some good points. As Larson bid goodbye, he chuckled and said he hoped McConnell would vote no (against his own plan). That brought a laugh from McConnell; during it, Larson added, "at least for the long-term unemployed," and McConnell replied, "Yeah," in a tone that could be interpreted as sarcastic. The Grimes campaign raised the issue in January, and the Lexington Herald-Leader did a story with the audio from the show.
• Grimes slipped a bit in the latest poll, and the race slipped again in the monthly rankings of Senate races by "The Fix" column in The Washington Post, down to No. 9 from No. 7, with No. 1 being the race most likely to decide control of the Senate: "The Democrats' best shot at a pickup might be in the Bluegrass State, where polling continues to show one of the tightest races in the country," but various models make McConnell a strong favorite – "in large part because the state is so red. FiveThirtyEight says McConnell has an 80 percent shot to win, and the Post pegs his chances even better than that." UPDATE, Aug. 16: "The Upshot" of The New York Times gives Grimes only a 12 percent chance of winning.
• On Thursday, McConnell answered questions from a panel of evangelical pastors, where he discussed "abortion, gay marriage and the persecution of Christians in Iraq . . . a rare discussion of social and religious issues for the Republican," report Adam Beam and Bruce Schreiner of The Associated Press. Grimes was absent. "Organizers invited her to the forum in Bowling Green — and two subsequent forums in Louisville and Somerset later this month — but the Grimes campaign has not said whether she would attend," the reporters write, noting that the candidates rarely discuss their faith.
• Schreiner also writes that Grimes said "McConnell has some explaining for his wife's role as a board member of an organization that has spent $50 million to close coal-fired power plants." Grimes has yet to say if she thinks former labor secretary Elaine Chao "should resign from the board of Bloomberg Philanthropies, a charity founded by former New York City mayor and media mogul Michael Bloomberg," Schreiner writes. Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear chimed in at the same state-fair event that Grimes attended and said, "Arguing that you're the champion of coal and then being together with groups ... that are anti-coal doesn't seem very consistent to me." McConnell said his wife will not resign from the board.