For the past year, Senator McConnell of Kentucky has waged a 50 million dollar media war against Democrat candidate Allison Lundergan Grimes. McConnell has been trying to make the death of coal, on his watch, a personal vendetta of President Obama wanting to kill coal jobs in Kentucky.

In his media war, very little industry facts have been allowed into the debate. Instead, Mitch has been hiding behind a strategy of issue "smoke and mirrors" hiding or otherwise distorting facts. The most recent example of his style for misleading Kentucky voters occurred on Kentucky Educational Television.

During the 2014 Senatorial debate on Kentucky Educational Television on Monday night from 7:00 pm Central Time to 8:00 pm, United States current senior Senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell tried to push coal (and "Obama's War on Coal) as the most important issue facing Kentucky. He failed.

National experts who have any working knowledge of the coal industry know what is happening to the rise and fall of the energy market for "Kentucky Ace in the Hole.'

Corporate coal has for the past 50 years controlled the policy debate in Frankfort, Ky. out of fear. Anyone or any agency that dared to challenge Big Coal or raise serious questions about coal's impact on Kentucky's environment were attacked or outright destroyed.

In 1993, Kentucky Legislative Research Commission helped to establish a new think tank for studying primary issues facing Kentucky - the Long Term Policy Research Center. Their most noted research effort was their report warning about the demise of tobacco as a major cash crop in Kentucky.

Their last major report (being finalized in 2010) that the Long Term Policy Research Center was about to release was an analysis that concluded that the coal industry in Kentucky was nearing the place the tobacco industry was in a few years earlier. Their research showed that coal would be at the center of a worldwide debate on the impact of carbon emissions on the climate. This report from within Kentucky state government would show Kentucky was moving to the wrong side of climate science.

Friends of coal acted quickly.

They had the Long Term Policy Research Center killed. Coal's hitman who pulled the trigger to kill the Research Center was then State Senator Leeper, (Paducah) the Senate Budget chairman. He struck two sentences in the 2010-2012 Kentucky Legislative Budget that ordered the Research Center to be closed end of business on June 30. Six policy researchers lost their jobs. Leeper saved the state $560,000 dollars in operational costs by cutting out the people whose only jobs were to give honest answers to honest questions.

Big coal got their way. There would be no public debate about what coal was doing or going to do to Kentucky's economy.
McConnell has made a career out of protecting big coal and their corporations and is now trying to say that coal jobs are being destroyed by President Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

It's not the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that is major cause of coal going away. Kentucky coal is no longer the cheapest fuel for corporate America. Coal mining jobs are going away primarily due to cheap natural gas fuel, mechanization and changing global energy markets.

What frame of mind exists within Mitch McConnell? Why? Is he not paid enough to be our senator? Does he not truly understand how the world, America, and Kentucky are changing?

Maybe I am overthinking how McConnell's brain works.

Maybe the entire War on Coal is simply a strategy to beat his opponent by tying her to an unpopular president.

If that is all it is, it's a sad defense for thirty years in government.