“I’m not planning on running – I am running,” he said definitively. “I’ve never been someone who has started late or who agonized publicly over whether I was going to run. I feel like I’m at the top of my game, at my peak effectiveness and I certainly am going to run again in 2014.”…

“If McConnell is going to operate that his major first political goal is to make Obama a one-termer, I don’t know how the Senate operates well,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

McConnell calls the criticisms “laughable,” saying that it’s “not a shocking revelation” that all Republican senators want to see a GOP president take office in 2013 – and he said a narrowly divided Senate will actually be ripe for bipartisan compromise.

“We’re going to do business if we can for the next two years, and then we’re going to go out there and butt heads and see if we can’t win in ’12,” he said.