Many, many news stories are repeating the claim that Mitch McConnell, in 2010, had “said in 2010 that the GOP’s top priority should be to make Obama a ‘one-term president.’” That’s the way Jeff Stein and Sean Sullivan put it in the Washington Post, but you can find similar descriptions elsewhere. I wrote about that comment a few years ago, offering more context than the current accounts usually give, in an article about the larger narrative of “Republican obstructionism”:
Another McConnell quote that comes up in this context is his remark that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” President Obama and other Democrats have expressed indignation that an opposition figure would say that about a newly elected president. The remark was, in truth, made in October 2010, well into the presidency. And it was in response to a question about electoral goals; McConnell wasn’t saying that defeating Obama was more important than boosting the economy. In his very next sentence he suggested that Republicans could “do business with” Obama if he moderated. A few sentences later, he added, “I don’t want the president to fail; I want him to change.”
Of course it is true that McConnell wanted Obama to lose in 2012, just as Chuck Schumer wanted Donald Trump to lose last week. But he didn’t quite say what the media made him out to be saying, and is still making him out to have said.