Opinion — Bill Straub: As McConnell steps aside for Thune, his legacy is a sad one

Sen. Mitch McConnell didn’t ruin Congress. That distinction rests with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his band of cutthroats who, in the 1990s, transformed a hectic and often agitated lower chamber into a free-fire zone where nothing gets accomplished, and dysfunction overwhelms.

And that legend continues to this day.

But McConnell, of Louisville, perfected the Georgia Republican’s campaign to tear down the walls, albeit in a subtler, more insidious manner, twisting the rules as the Senate’s long-serving GOP leader to constantly quash efforts to push the nation hesitatingly forward and then abusing the nominating process to create a disdainful Supreme Court.

Those days have finally run their course. The 82-year-old McConnell has stepped aside as GOP leader after an historic 17-year run, turning the reins over to his second-in-command, Sen. John Thune, R-SD, who is expected to essentially follow the same course charted by McConnell, who, in the words of columnist George Will, is “the second-most consequential conservative — after Ronald Reagan — in national politics in his lifetime.”

Consequential, as has been noted before, carries neither a positive nor a negative connotation – Hitler, for instance, was the most consequential politician in Germany during his lifetime, which ended abruptly in 1945. But there’s no question McConnell has left his mark on the body politic through his 39 years and counting in office. Some of it has been praiseworthy – his influence on foreign affairs, particularly his support for Ukraine in face of the Russian invasion, has been exemplary.

But the rest is a mish-mosh.

McConnell conveniently summed up his political philosophy in May 2021 during an interview with NBC News. By then Democrats had captured the White House and the majority in both legislative chambers.
“One-hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration,” he said.

Mitch’s old Senate pal, President Joe Biden, was settled in at the White House by then. But rather than express an interest in working with the administration or voicing a hope to find common ground, McConnell immediately took to the mattresses, evincing what has perpetually been his modus operandi — party over country. No matter the issue or the potential consequences, McConnell rarely sought to accomplish anything other than collect power for the sake of power and undermine those seeking a brighter path ahead.

McConnell sought to achieve his goals by abusing Senate filibuster rules, using a process implemented to protect the rights of the minority in the Senate and turning it into a political bludgeon, not for reasons of public policy but simply to attain more power.

Cloture, a procedure that previous party leaders could have availed themselves of but generally chose to use only in special circumstances, proved to be his favorite implement in the toolbox. It is a form of filibuster that basically requires 60 of the 100 Senate members to support proceeding to a vote on a bill. Sans cloture, a bare majority is adequate to proceed.

In a closely divided Senate, a 60-vote requirement can kill a bill even if a majority of lawmakers support it. And McConnell has the killing fields to prove it.

During the 109th legislative session, from Jan. 3, 2005 to Jan. 3, 2007, with Republicans in the majority, the Democratic minority under Sen. Harry Reid, of Nevada, sought cloture on 68 occasions. The following session, the 110th, with Democrats back in control and McConnell installed as GOP leader, Republicans initiated 139 cloture votes, more than twice the number Reid sought during the previous session and a record number to that point in history.

And the numbers only grew in proceeding sessions. By the time of the 113th Congress, with McConnell as minority leader, the number reached 252. In 117th Congress, 2021-2023, Republicans under McConnell sought cloture 336 times.

Democrats, once they were in the minority, felt compelled to join in the cloture craze. But it was McConnell who got the ball rolling, placing party as always, over country. Writing in The Atlantic, two political scientists, Jacob Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson at the University of California, Berkley, asserted, “No one presently — or perhaps ever — in the Senate has practiced the dark art of obstruction as relentlessly as Mitch McConnell.”

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a governmental oversight organization, bluntly stated, “Sen. McConnell turned the world’s greatest deliberative body into a dysfunctional, undemocratic, and feckless institution.”
 
That neatly sums up McConnell’s legacy.

In a press release, Democracy 21 noted that Biden’s agenda upon assuming office, “including voting rights, immigration reform, and lowering prescription drug prices” faced Republican filibusters.
“Even the bipartisan plan to establish an independent commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol is blocked by a Republican filibuster,” the organization said.

McConnell blocked so many judicial and cabinet appointments during the administration of President Barack Obama, including nominations to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, considered the nation’s most powerful panel behind the Supreme Court, that Reid in his role as majority leader changed the rules to prohibit cloture on votes on judicial designees for all but the high court.

There were issues other than constant cloture motions. McConnell fought tooth-and-nail against the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, when it passed in 2010, providing an estimated 44 million Americans with health care coverage they previously didn’t have access to or couldn’t afford. Once Republicans captured the majority in 2016 McConnell sought to repeal the historic law, only to come up short when an old interparty rival, the late Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, voted to keep it.

There are too many lowlights in the McConnell resume to cite. A couple quick hits:

• McConnell infamously messed around with two Supreme Court appointments while Republicans held the majority. Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died, on the court in 2016 but McConnell refused to even consider it, saying that such appointments shouldn’t be ratified in the year of a presidential election. Four years later, in 2020, McConnell pushed through the nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg who likewise died in office. That nomination, from President Donald Trump, was voted on just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost. Somehow, McConnell managed to ignore the rule he made up from thin air just a few years earlier. McConnell cites this as his greatest achievement.

• McConnell served as Trump’s enabler during his first four years in office even though he told a biographer that he considered the president stupid and a disgrace. In fact, McConnell endorsed Trump in his successful campaign to regain the White House, even though he held him responsible for instigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election that Trump lost. All this even though Trump insulted him on numerous occasions.

It is not a pretty picture. McConnell seems destined to go down as one of the worst congressional leaders in history despite the accolades that paint him as a legislative genius for stomping all over legislative comity. Kentucky in reviewing its moribund economic condition often sighs, “Thank God for Mississippi.” McConnell likely thanks God for Bill Frist, a nothingburger from Tennessee who preceded him in the post.

One point, besides his international acumen, might be the disdain McConnell occasionally displayed toward the far right within his GOP caucus, bomb throwers like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, and Sen. Rick Scott, R-FL, who want to steamroll anyone standing in the way of their wacky ambitions.

After stepping down as Republican leader, it’s expected that McConnell will retire and not seek an eighth term two years hence. He is already the longest serving senator in Commonwealth history.

There are reports that he may assume the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, a position that may prove more beneficial to Kentucky than his tenure as Republican leader.

Regardless, these next two years should prove interesting for McConnell as he confronts an administration led by Trump. The two men despise each other and a potential stand-off already percolates.

Trump, as is his wont, has nominated some real winners for high positions within his administration. Four whack jobs stand-out – Former congressman Matt Gaetz, for attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vax activist, for secretary of Health and Human Services, ex congresswoman and former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard to head the CIA .and a Fox News figure, Pete Hegseth to run the Defense Department.

All four carry enough baggage to sink the Titanic. When push comes to shove, will McConnell manage to scrape up the courage to oppose these bozos or will force of habit return him to the party over country path?

The betting lines are open.