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"What have we become?" cried Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell during a lengthy floor speech Wednesday afternoon. The Republican leader lamented the "theatrics and the messaging wars" that he said have come to define and "cheapen" the upper chamber today.

"I'm absolutely certain of one thing: the Senate can be better than it is," he said.

"We've gotten too comfortable with doing everything we do here through the prism of the next election, instead of the prism of duty. And everyone suffers as a result," the Republican leader said.

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McConnell blamed Democrats for the rancorous partisanship that has damaged the chamber in recent years, mourning the days when it functioned in a bipartisan manner, unlike "the hollow shell of a Senate we have today."

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Democrats viewed the speech as a breathtaking act of hypocrisy, pointing out that McConnell has publicly admitted ( http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/01/strict-obstructionis
t/308344/) to working to deny Democrats bipartisan votes on issues like health care. Then there are his remarks after the 2010 elections that the "single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president" ( http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-mitch-mcconnell-has-some-explaining-to
-do/).

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