By LAURIE KELLMAN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Old and new Washington collided on Capitol Hill Monday, and new won.
Within moments of flicking on the Senate lights, Sen. Mitch McConnell announced that when it came to pork barrel politics he had changed his mind. The Senate’s staunchest fan of so-called “earmarks” reversed course and supported a ban on those special spending requests, a bow to the tea partiers and others in the populist, anti-establishment wave that gave the GOP control of the House and six more seats in the Senate.
“Old habits aren’t easy to break, but sometimes they must be,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.