McConnell doesn’t wear a MAGA hat (I’m not fooled)
Late last month, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky announced that he would leave his position as Republican leader after the November elections. He’ll depart as the longest-serving party leader in the Senate’s history.
There’s no question McConnell is one of the most consequential politicians of his generation. This isn’t a compliment. McConnell is not consequential for what he accomplished. He’s consequential for what he’s done to degrade and diminish American democracy.
McConnell, as journalist Alec MacGillis noted in “The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell,” was never driven by ideology. He was a moderate, pro-choice Republican before he became a hard-right, conservative one. “What has motivated McConnell has not been a particular vision for the government or the country, but the game of politics and career advancement in its own right,” MacGillis wrote in 2014.
It is a politics of the will to power, in which the only thing that matters is partisan victory. “At some point along the way,” MacGillis wrote, “Mitch McConnell decided that his own longevity in Washington trumped all.”
McConnell’s quest for power, no matter the cost, explains how he became a fierce opponent of campaign finance reform, doing everything he could to help flood American politics with the unaccountable money of anonymous billionaires and other wealthy interests.
That same quest for power is what brought us his now infamous declaration that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” which he operationalized by weaponizing the filibuster to effectively end majority rule in the Senate. The rules were changed decades before his ascent to the leadership of the Republican conference in 2007, but it was McConnell who established the de facto 60-vote threshold for legislation that keeps most items from reaching the floor, much less getting a vote.
The routine use of the filibuster to gum up the works is a McConnell innovation. The main effect of McConnell’s strategy of obstruction has been to erode Congress’ ability to govern. You might even say that Donald Trump’s promise, during his 2016 campaign, to personally seize control of the federal government (“I alone can fix it”) fed directly on the dysfunction produced by McConnell’s commitment to congressional gridlock.
As bad as that is, however, it is only the beginning of McConnell’s responsibility for Trump. His decision to deny a hearing to Obama’s third Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, turned the 2016 presidential election into a contest for ideological control of the court. The prospect of a solid right-wing majority on the court unified the Republican coalition behind Trump. It helped him consolidate wary conservative voters, including evangelicals, and pushed skeptical Republican lawmakers to fall in line. There is a real sense in which Trump owes his victory over Hillary Clinton to that vacant seat on the Supreme Court.
Of course, McConnell was always quick to share his distaste for Trump’s language and behavior. But McConnell was nothing if not business first, and Trump was a vehicle for realizing his partisan goals.
The Senate Republican leader would defend Trump from Democratic scrutiny during his first impeachment trial. And while McConnell would condemn Trump for the events of Jan. 6, 2021, he refused to hold Trump accountable. As Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin reported in “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” McConnell justified himself by telling two associates, “The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us.” He voted “not guilty” in the subsequent impeachment trial.
Given the opportunity to show real leadership, McConnell withered and voted to acquit Trump. Perhaps if he had actually acted as a leader, the former president would not be poised to win office a second time.
When McConnell goes for good in January 2027, he will not leave the Senate as a statesman. He will leave it as handmaiden to a would-be despot.