The Reign of Terror during the French Revolution lasted less than a year.
Mitch McConnell’s tenure as Senate Republican leader, a positioned he announced he will be exiting after the November elections, has lasted a record 17 years.
So, choose your poison – a quick beheading during one Reign of Terror or a 17-year tape loop of the Louisville lawmaker droning on about domestic policy during another?
Sacre bleu! What an easy choice.
Now, before anyone’s boxers get all bunched up, that was just a joke. But McConnell’s time in the upper chamber’s hot spot is not. Indeed, as noted in numerous spots recently, he has emerged during this period as the most consequential figure in recent Senate history – with consequential carrying neither a positive nor a negative connotation.
McConnell’s capitulation at age 82 was inevitable. His mishandling of legislation to enhance protections along the southern border showed him losing the confidence of his Republican caucus. His right flank, including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, was becoming increasingly caustic and potential additions as a result of the November elections would likely spread that discontent. Former President Donald J. Trump, the party’s inevitable candidate for another White House run, has called for his ouster and acknowledged he likely would be unable to work with him in the future.
Add to all that the growing list of infirmities, his age and the behind-the-scenes elbow throwing to replace him and it’s obvious that Addison Mitchell McConnell, the longest serving senator in Kentucky history, was dead man walking, at least in regard to his leadership role. His declaration now indicates he is unlikely to seek re-election when his current term, number seven, ends in 2026, with former GOP gubernatorial candidate Daniel Cameron and Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, among others waiting impatiently for him to offer a clue to his future plans.
So, the assessment has begun. Critics on the left, and they are plentiful, claim his constant games-playing has ruined the federal judiciary, thus attracting public condemnation on what once was one of America’s most respected sectors. He was a Trump enabler turned critic turned coward when he ultimately failed to endorse his impeachment for the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. And he used the powers at his disposal to make a mockery of the legislative process, resulting in the hideous goings-on on Capitol Hill the nation is experiencing today.
It’s a mixed bag on the conservative side. Many on the right applaud his judiciary maneuverings, citing the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, which had established a woman’s right to abortion, as an unmitigated triumph. And, as conservatives inevitably do, they loved the tax cuts and attacks on regulations. But the increasingly influential MAGA wing hates him with the power of a million suns, claiming he too often stunted the initiatives of their golden idol, Donald Trump, whose hatred of McConnell extended to his supporters as well.
The House Freedom Caucus, that collection of right-wing nitwits, responded to McConnell’s announcement with this on X: “Our thoughts are with our Democrat colleagues in the Senate on the retirement of their Co-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ukraine). No need to wait till November… Senate Republicans should IMMEDIATELY elect a *Republican* Minority Leader.”
In considering Mitch McConnell, it’s worth noting he has an ego as big as all outdoors. While an initial reaction likely would maintain that all big-time politicians have huge egos, a generally correct assumption, few come close to McConnell, who did whatever was necessary to maintain his status, no matter who or what it hurt, and make it clear to one and all that he was the master not only of the Senate rules but the champion non pareil of maneuvering and infighting.
There’s no doubt McConnell was fully capable but he was never the superhero depicted by his sycophants who convinced the media and the rest of the world that he was the Muhammed Ali of legislative brawlers. It’s damning with faint praise to say McConnell was superior to his predecessor as Republican leader, former Sen. Bill Frist, of Tennessee, who was a monumental bumbler. But he was certainly no better than the late Sen. Howard Baker, of Tennessee, or the late Bob Dole, of Kansas, who operated basically under the same rules as McConnell but handled matters in a more appropriate manner.
Both Baker and Dole, for instance, believed in fair play and sought bipartisanship with opposing Democrats to move the country forward. Obviously, they didn’t always succeed. But their commitment to trying to work things out kept the ball rolling.
McConnell was having none of that, essentially reducing Senate politics to a zero-sum game. He was the anti-bipartisanship leader, telling the Atlantic magazine in 2011, for instance: “We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals. Because we thought — correctly, I think — that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the ‘bipartisan’ tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there’s a broad agreement that that’s the way forward.”
That take-no-prisoners approach was apparent soon after President Biden assumed office in early 2021 when McConnell told reporters, “100 percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration.”
Not working with the new administration to find common ground, mind you. Just “stopping.”
McConnell, unlike Baker, Dole and others, rarely sought accord. He regularly dealt in partisan gridlock that jammed the already sluggish gears of government. His preferred method was and likely will continue to be until he steps aside in November, obstruction, unprecedented use of the filibuster and other twists in the arcane Senate rules to grind the wheels of democracy to a halt. That has been Mitch McConnell’s modus operandi for 17 years.
McConnell’s tactics weren’t always successful. Serving in the minority in 2010, McConnell pulled out the stops to kill Obamacare – the national expansion of health care opportunities. He failed. Then, in 2017, back in the majority, he led the endeavor to repeal the law. That likewise failed, so millions of Americans could still retain access to health care.
By the way, an estimated 500,000 Kentuckians benefit from Obamacare, the measure McConnell tried to deep six.
When all is said and done, McConnell was the primary architect of today’s congressional operations, tossing aside commonly held notions of legislative propriety that existed for years. For that he is lauded as a strategic genius. Meanwhile, the country winds up holding the bag with a Congress unable to get its job done.
Almost all of the conservative kudos tossed McConnell’s way rally around the federal judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court, which has veered right as a result of his direct involvement. McConnell was hostile to numerous judicial appointments made by President Barack Obama, a man he absolutely loathed for some unknown reason. He used Senate rules to block them, including long-open appointments to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, forcing then Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, to change upper chamber rules and prohibit the filibustering of judicial nominees – except for the Supreme Court – lest the system become overwhelmed.
McConnell’s maneuvering to get three conservatives on the Supreme Court – justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – is a legend in infamy. He extended the filibuster ban to high court nominees and literally cheated to get Gorsuch on, refusing to consider Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for more than a year until Trump assumed the presidency. He undertook a similar bamboozle in behalf of Coney Barrett, rushing her through just weeks before Trump left office. And he staged a phony baloney review of sexual assault claims against Kavanaugh to hand him a robe.
The court, once one of the nation’s most respected institutions, is paying the price. Its approval rating, according to a Marquette Law School poll, is down to 40 percent. And now it has tossed a lifeline to Trump, moving to consider his claim to complete immunity for any crimes he may have committed while in office, effectively delaying or, worse, putting the kibosh on his trial for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
But most point to his decision to let Trump off the hook as his most significant disaster. Trump was impeached twice by the House, the first time for attempting to blackmail the president of Ukraine into investigating President Biden while he was vice president under Obama, using U.S. aid as leverage. The second time it was for helping spark the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.
McConnell, voted to acquit in both instances, even though he denounced Trump for a “disgraceful dereliction of duty” and being “politically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.” The remarks were enough to transform McConnell into the ex-president’s mortal enemy – joining a long list. But he ultimately failed to hold him accountable and rally fellow GOP senators to vote for impeachment, a move that would have prohibited Trump from holding the office again.
As a coda, McConnell acknowledged that he will vote for Trump if he is the party’s nominee, despite his attempt to overthrow the legitimate election results. There’s even been discussions that would have McConnell formally endorse him.
That incident is perhaps the prime example of McConnell’s real failure to lead and a revelation into what really motivated him – his own well-being. During the course of his 39-year Senate tenure, including the 17 years as party floor leader, McConnell has concentrated on his own ambitions and the accumulation of power for power’s sake. If anything possibly got in the way of his continued service leading the Senate GOP – like a Trump impeachment or addressing the southern border – he melted like a snowflake in Honolulu. That empowered the crazy right wing that has consumed the Republican Party in both the House and the Senate and opening the door to yet another era of Trumpism.
Most kids grow up wanting to be president. Addison Mitchell McConnell wanted to be the Republican leader in the Senate. Having attained that status, he was bound to keep it, regardless of the cost to the nation or anything else.
It’s always been about Mitch. It always will be.
