Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has no comment on a passage in former President George W. Bush’s recently released book that led a local newspaper to criticize McConnell for excessive partisanship.

In his new memoir, “Decision Points,” Bush writes that McConnell came to the Oval Office in September 2006, with the midterm elections fast approaching. McConnell told Bush that his unpopularity was going to cost the GOP control of Congress, the 43rd president writes in the book. When Bush asked for McConnell’s advice, the Kentucky senator told Bush he should withdraw some troops from Iraq, according to the memoir.

“He was not alone,” Bush writes of McConnell’s suggestion. “As violence in Iraq escalated, members of both parties had called for a pullout.”

The former president adds, “I made it clear I would set troop levels to achieve victory in Iraq, not victory at the polls.”

In an editorial published online Thursday, the Louisville Courier-Journal pointed to the passage in Bush’s book as evidence of McConnell’s penchant for partisanship.

“This incident, which Sen. McConnell’s office has not denied, shines brightly on the contemptible hypocrisy and obsessive partisanship that have come to mark the senator’s time in office,” the paper’s editorial says.