Sen. Mitch McConnell obviously is not a robust fellow at the age of 82 and recent incidents at least suggest the time has arrived for him to step aside for his own benefit and the welfare of the Commonwealth.
But, then again, maybe not.
McConnell, R-Louisville, has, over the past few years, exhibited a tendency to fall at inconvenient times, leading to various injuries, including a concussion that sidelined him from his legislative duties for weeks and a broken shoulder. His difficulties are a result of a childhood battle with polio which weakened his left leg, but it seems the unfortunate stumbling is becoming more frequent.
On Wednesday, McConnell fell twice, first on a stairway near the Senate chamber and a bit later while attending a Republican conference lunch. He subsequently left the Capitol in a wheelchair.
McConnell’s office, as it has done traditionally on these occasions, issued assurances that the veteran lawmaker remains fit as a fiddle and that the minor setback will not disrupt his work schedule.
Perhaps. But it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to detect that McConnell is now extremely frail and that his speech, never particularly rapid, has become slow and halting. On two occasions in 2023 while addressing the press he appeared seemed for several seconds to devolve into a trance – seemingly unaware of his whereabouts and unable to speak.
McConnell bowed somewhat to the erosion caused by time by stepping down after a record-breaking 18-year stint as Senate Republican leader but simultaneously vowing to serve out the remaining two years of his term. Though it’s expected he will not seek re-election — he already holds the record for Kentucky senators, having served 40 years in the upper chamber — he has not definitively said he doesn’t intend to run in 2026.
Regardless, times like this might normally lead to suggestions that the time has come for McConnell to step aside. The nation just got through wondering whether former President Joe Biden, at 83 and noticeably slowed physically, would make it to the end of his term. McConnell might want to bail out while the gettin’s still good.
It ain’t gonna happen for reasons both practical and aspirational.
Kentucky has a Democratic governor in Andy Beshear. In the old days, before Republicans assumed control of the commonwealth and considered silly laws like banning the governor’s name from signs welcoming travelers to the state, he would have been solely responsible for filling a Senate opening. In 2021, the General Assembly adopted a law requiring the governor to select a candidate from a list of three recommended by the party of the person who previously held the seat. That concept changed again last year when lawmakers passed a bill determining that an empty seat would be filled through special election, a seemingly awkward and expensive procedure.
It’s reasonable to believe that a protracted lawsuit would result if McConnell resigned and objections arose to the process removing the responsibility from the hands of the governor, conceivably leaving the seat vacant for who knows how long. Besides, while it’s beyond remote that a Democrat might wind up winning a special election, Kentucky Democrats appear unable to get out of their own way, the even-cautious McConnell might not want to take the risk.
But there’s also legacy, a concept of which McConnell is most aware. Like most politicians who have been around a long, or maybe too long, time, McConnell, is unlikely to concur with de Gaulle’s admonition that “the graveyards are filled with irreplaceable men.” He may believe the nation needs him and like Bartleby the Scrivener, asked to leave, he would reply, “I would prefer not to.”
Ironically, he may be close to making a good point.
Consider, McConnell was a terrible and destructive Republican Senate leader. This era of horrid politics and government essentially kicked off in 2008 when he and then-House Republican Leader Eric Cantor, of Virginia, divined to oppose any and all initiatives offered by the newly-elected President Barack Obama, a Democrat, before he even took the oath of office and laid out any proposals.
Remember, this was a period when the economy was on the brink of collapse. It recovered despite constant GOP opposition to any plans to address the turmoil, a strategy spearheaded by McConnell.
Thus launched the open political warfare the nation suffers from today. Since that sad outset McConnell has proceeded to ruin the federal judiciary and pave a path for President Donald J. Trump, who I heard referred to as the Mango Mussolini a few days ago.
In normal times McConnell’s departure would be a godsend. These, obviously, are not normal times. Almost every Senate Republican has lined up behind Trump like lemmings leaping off a cliff.
Not McConnell.
McConnell infamously endorsed Trump for president last year, asserting he was obliged to perform the distasteful act as the Senate GOP leader and the top elected Republican official in the government. The two men, it was well known, despise each other dating back to Trump’s first term in office and when McConnell held the current president responsible for the attempted insurrection at the Capitol in January 2021.
Trump has called him everything but a good, Christian man ever since. And it appears McConnell is ready to exact a little revenge. He voted against Trump’s choice for defense secretary, the abysmally unqualified Peter Hegseth, and told Leslie Stahl during an interview on CBS “60 Minutes” on Sunday that he looks forward to being “more outspoken about things that I particularly care about than I have been in the past.”
McConnell indicated that he is particularly concerned with the resurgence of isolationism within a Republican Party led by Trump. It’s likely that, sometime in the near future, McConnell and Trump will butt heads over Ukraine, a nation under attack from Russia, McConnell is a fervent supporter of Ukraine. Trump, it’s fair to say, is not.
“America first, that’s what they used in the 30s, and I’m hopeful the new administration will understand and act, not with just language that says America first, but funding that underscores the nature of the threat,” he said. “Look, what is the situation? North Korea, China, Russia, Iran. This is a huge threat, a fight between the autocrats and the democracies, and when it comes to the democratic world, only one country can lead. That’s us.”
Then there’s Trump’s weird thing about tariffs.
“It will drive the cost of everything up,” McConnell said. “In other words, it’ll be paid for by American consumers. I mean, why would you want to get in a fight with your allies over this?’’
Make no mistake, McConnell is not the perfect agent to carry the anti-Trump message. For one thing he said he intends to support most of the administration’s initiatives. He has proved himself untrustworthy and the Senate would have been a much better place over the past four decades without him.
But, with the exception of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, no Republican has stepped up to question the obvious corruption and excesses of the new Trump administration. The GOP lawmakers have immersed themselves in Trumpism, so any deviation from that norm has to be welcomed.
And it could be worse. If McConnell were to suddenly retire or, as expected, he chooses not to seek re-election, his most likely replacements are a couple of stooges – Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, and former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, of Louisville, who both can be expected to fall all over themselves seeking the Trump endorsement if it comes to that.
In the end, it must be said that McConnell is a sneaky, amoral fraud who has made life in America perceptibly worse. But he’s our sneaky, amoral fraud who has made life in America perceptibly worse.