McConnell bent the arc of U.S. history to the right
Mitch McConnell won’t just go down as the longest-serving party leader in the history of the U.S. Senate. He will also be remembered as one of the most consequential conservative leaders in the history of our country.
That is not hyperbole: Religious liberty. Free speech. Second Amendment rights. Separation of powers. Limited government. The right to life. A strong defense. When the Kentucky Republican steps down from leadership in November, as he announced on Wednesday, he will leave all of these pillars of American conservatism far stronger than they would have been without him.
Start with the courts, as any appraisal of McConnell must. Certainly, President Donald Trump deserves enormous credit for making outstanding judicial nominations. But it was McConnell, with his farsighted leadership in the Senate, who laid the groundwork for the conservative transformation of the federal judiciary.
In 2014, after Democrats invoked the so-called nuclear option — eliminating the filibuster for all but Supreme Court judicial nominations — McConnell and the GOP won back control of the Senate in the 2014 midterms, then blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to replace the late Antonin Scalia in 2016. He faced down enormous pressure, and in so doing saved the court’s conservative majority.
Then, when Trump took office and nominated Neil M. Gorsuch, a judge of unquestioned qualifications and temperament, Democrats decided to filibuster his nomination. It was a grave miscalculation, and McConnell capitalized, convincing his GOP colleagues that they had no choice but to extend the Democrats’ precedent and eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations.
If Democrats had not overplayed their hand, and had McConnell not skillfully exploited their error, Gorsuch would never have been confirmed - and neither would Brett M. Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett. Conservatives owe the Supreme Court’s 6-3 majority, and all the consequential decisions it has produced, to McConnell.
While the Supreme Court hears only about 80 cases a year, the federal appeals courts have final say on about 60,000. McConnell’s GOP majority confirmed more than 200 judges to the lower courts during Trump’s term.
McConnell handled policy fights with the same virtuoso acumen. Every Trump legislative accomplishment, from passing criminal justice reform, to opportunity zones to rebuild our inner cities, opioid and sex-trafficking legislation, and the Right to Try law, has McConnell’s fingerprints on them.
McConnell broke with Trump when he needed to, however. He refused Trump’s repeated demands to eliminate the legislative filibuster at a time when Republicans controlled the White House, Senate and House.
When Biden took office, McConnell blocked many of the president’s most egregious legislative initiatives, including his partisan For the People Act a breathtaking 800-page federal assault on states’ authority to conduct their own elections, and most of Biden’s multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better social spending plan.
His legislative skills have been exceeded only by his political skills. In the 2022 midterms, when Trump backed a disastrous slate of Senate candidates and then failed to help them, McConnell-aligned superPACs invested a whopping $240 million in key races. Without those efforts, Republicans would not be within striking range of taking back the Senate this November.
Most important, McConnell emerged as the critical voice in Washington, and the Republican Party, in support of Reaganite leadership on the world stage. He secured Senate ratification for the expansion of NATO to include Finland and Sweden, and is pushing back on GOP isolationist opposition to U.S. support for Ukraine.
This only scratches the surface of achievements that span nearly four decades, and his work is not yet finished. But when it is, Mitch McConnell will be remembered as a giant of the Senate and a hero of the conservative movement.