Why are we not talking about this? This week we learned that minority leader Senator Mitch McConnell's priority is winning power, whatever the costs. Even if it means he has to completely contradict his own course to do it.

According to former President George W. Bush's new memoir "Decision Points," in 2006 McConnell asked the commander in chief of the United States to draw down the number of troops in Iraq in order to help Republicans survive in that November's elections.

You read that right. At the time McConnell was pugnaciously defending the war effort in Iraq he was privately pleading with Bush to diminish that same effort in an attempt to save Republican seats.

Apparently McConnell's first concern wasn't the threat to life and limb confronting U.S. soldiers, he seems to have been more fearful that the mess in Iraq would cause the Republican Party to lose the approaching mid-term elections. Priorities, you know?

To date McConnell's office has not denied any of Bush's claims.

But there's a difference between partisanship and taking leave of one's moral center, or at least there used to be. The theme of tarring the opposition and preventing them a 'win', at whatever cost to the nation, has become the hallmark of the increasingly nihilistic GOP.