Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell holds the only political position he has ever coveted and he has no desire to give it up – at least for another two years.
The main storyline emerging from the Louisville lawmaker’s recent interview with CNN, other than his continued refusal to condemn the racist attack on his wife, Elaine Chao, by former President Donald J. Trump, centers on the announcement that he has the votes necessary to continue serving as Senate Republican leader for another two years beginning in January.
That’s not exactly a shocking declaration. No one in the GOP caucus has expressed a desire to depose McConnell from the position he grasps like a starving dog on a bone. While there is some grumbling on the right, from the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-WI, there has never been any evidence of a coordinated ouster campaign.
McConnell only needs about 25 votes, give-or-take, in what now is a 50-member Senate Republican Conference to retain his high muckety-muck status, with that number either dipping, growing or remaining the same based on the November election results. He has held the spot, without any real opposition, since 2007. Should he succeed as he predicted, McConnell, with two more years under his belt, will eclipse former Senate Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield, of Montana, as the longest-serving party leader in Senate history.
“I have the votes,” he said in the CNN interview.
But perhaps more interesting is the 80-year-old McConnell’s reticence to express determination to seek another two years as GOP leader once the upcoming term expires in 2024. His Senate hitch ends after the 2026 election and it remains up in the air whether he will seek an eighth six-year term when he will have achieved the ripe, old age of 84. But that would still potentially give him another two years in the leadership job before re-election time.
There are reasons for his hesitancy beyond just his advancing years. Despite his strong overall support within the conference, that fidelity is exhibiting wear. McConnell is, by most measures, the least-liked political figure on the public stage and has been for some time. Although he has survived that designation, it has left him vulnerable to the point that several GOP Senate candidates vowed to oppose his nomination as conference leader. At least one, Eric Schmitt, the Missouri attorney general, is nearly assured of election.
McConnell is seeking to ease that pressure by pouring millions of dollars into various Senate campaigns this year through his super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, in hopes of buying loyalty. The problem is some of those contenders, like Herschel Walker in Georgia, might not make it past the finish line.
Citing disappointing results in 2010 and 2012 because of low candidate quality in what were considered winnable races, McConnell acknowledged, “Whether it’s a challenge, whether it’s fatal or a big problem this year, we’ll find out.”
And it’s no sure thing that McConnell can count on the support the state’s other lawmaker in the upper chamber, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, who seems to be bearing a grudge against McConnell for some time, perhaps dating back to 2010 when McConnell supported his opponent in the GOP primary for an open seat.
Both men have tried to place a happy face on their relationship over the past 12 years but hostility burst into the open earlier this year when McConnell failed to consult with Paul over the nomination of a conservative Republican for an open federal district court seat in Kentucky, a choice McConnell somehow wrangled with President Biden. Their disagreement ultimately sunk the nomination, leading to the sort of finger-pointing even a second-grader would find excessive.
It’s also true that Paul, and this is no secret, thinks a helluva lot of himself and he might be tired, as the junior senator, of playing second banana to McConnell the headliner. He may just side with Trump, who absolutely detests McConnell, and conclude it’s time for new leadership.
Which brings us to the elephant in the room. An orange one. And, yes, that’s a fat joke if you’re wondering, one I can make being a member of the club myself.
Trump has made it one of his primary causes in life to see to it that McConnell gets the heave-ho. He has called for, no, demanded, McConnell’s ouster as leader, going so far as to try and recruit someone to run against him, to no avail.
“Mitch McConnell is not an Opposition Leader, he is a pawn for the Democrats to get whatever they want,” Trump said in a statement released in August. “He is afraid of them, and will not do what has to be done. A new Republican Leader in the Senate should be picked immediately!”
And there is the even more infamous attack he launched on his social media site, Truth Social, after McConnell supported and got passed a stopgap spending measure to keep the government open into December:
“Is McConnell approving all of these Trillions of Dollars worth of Democrat sponsored Bills, without even the slightest bit of negotiation, because he hates Donald J. Trump, and he knows I am strongly opposed to them, or is he doing it because he believes in the Fake and Highly Destructive Green New Deal and is willing to take the Country down with him? In any event, either reason is unacceptable. He has a DEATH WISH. Must immediately seek help and advise from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!”
Most analysts date the mutual animosity among the parties to the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, when McConnell asserted that Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the Capitol riot. But the bad feelings pre-date that incident, going back at least to when McConnell, during his time as majority leader, dismissed Trump’s demand to kill the filibuster rule. They both tried to cover up their dislike then, but it’s obvious McConnell is not Trump’s kind of guy, and vice-versa.
The problem facing McConnell, therefore is the little matter of Trump staging a comeback campaign for the White House, the direction in which he is obviously heading, as long as he’s not forced to move from his residence at Mar-a-Lago to a place in the 66048 zip code of Leavenworth, KS.
McConnell has, inanely, said he will support Trump if he is the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2024. Regardless, there is no way in God’s green earth that McConnell can once again serve as the party’s Senate leader during a Trump presidency. Trump will simply refuse to deal with him and prevail upon the other GOP senators, whether they’re in the minority or the majority, to come up with someone new.
McConnell’s tenure as Republican leader, a position he used to manipulate the system, block nearly everything majority Democrats sought to advance, stack the Supreme Court with extreme right-wing Federalist Society members through unfair and underhanded means, and create a divisive atmosphere that cripples the nation to this day, has earned him understandable animus, relegating him to the status as worst Senate party leader in history, although his predecessor, Bill Frist, of Tennessee was pretty doggone bad.
And it’s gone on for 15 long years, with two more to come.
Ironically, this reign of dread might ultimately be brought to a halt by Trump, an even worse specimen, who continues to loom over the GOP like Godzilla over Tokyo.