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Louisville, Kentucky (CNN) -- A secret audio recording of their biggest election year target -- Sen. Mitch McConnell -- talking to a donor summit arranged by the Koch brothers, the Democrats' 2014 bogeymen.

Democrats pushed "The Nation" story around online with frenetic glee.

McConnell's Democratic challenger for his Kentucky seat, Alison Lundergan Grimes, couldn't wait to whack him on it, telling CNN in an exclusive interview that "Mitch McConnell got caught in his 47% Mitt Romney moment."

"I think it shows the extent and the lengths he will go to to pander to his party millionaires and billionaires at the expense of hurting Kentuckians," Grimes told CNN.

The problem with the Democrats' argument is that Romney's 47% moment was only a moment because he was saying to donors in private something he would never have dared to utter in public:

"Forty-seven percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement," Romney said behind closed doors about President Obama's supporters in 2012.

But unlike Romney, what McConnell said to the Koch brothers are things he has said in public, and more importantly, his comments mirror positions he has publicly backed with actual Senate votes: opposition to Democrats' plans to increase the minimum wage, extend unemployment insurance and make student loans more affordable through the tax system.

If Republicans are in charge, he said, those won't be coming back to the Senate floor.

"We're not going to be debating all these gosh-darn proposals," McConnell told the Koch brothers and the rest of the room full of billionaire donors.

Excerpt from:
The limits of a secret tape