Last week, Kentucky’s senior US Senator and the Republican minority leader announced he was resigning his leadership post in the Senate, effective at the end of the year. Given his decision to step down from his record-setting stint as the leader of his party’s Senate delegation and his failing health, there is little doubt this will be Mitch McConnell’s last Senate term. He would be 85 years old when his current term expires in 2027.
In making the announcement, McConnell acknowledged that his views were out of step with those of most of his party. His relationship with the party’s presumptive nominee for president, Donald Trump, has been described by pundits as “toxic” since the January 2021 Capitol insurgency.
There are pain points between McConnell and other GOP leaders as well. His insistence on continuing to provide military assistance to Ukraine is growing increasingly unpopular in the party. His leadership style, which tends to be insular and plodding, is at odds with the populist tenor of the younger Republican senators.
But it’s McConnell’s cold war with Trump that has cost him his formerly exalted status within his party. They have reportedly not spoken a word to each other since December 2020. In one of the few true bipartisan and patriotic moments of his career, McConnell broke with pro-Trumpers in denouncing the Capitol attack during a speech from the Senate floor in 2021.
“Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty,” McConnell had said. He added that Trump was “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.”
Nor was this a one-time incident, spurred by the unprecedented events of Jan. 6. McConnell had publicly criticized Trump for years and had been reported as privately excoriating him. There is no doubt he was never a fan of Donald Trump.
Yet, when the Senate took up the conviction of Trump on charges stemming from his actions on Jan. 6, McConnell voted against convicting Trump.
Despite his dislike of Trump, like many other Republicans before him who fell in line, McConnell put his own political survival ahead of his true views. McConnell knew then that Trump was (and remains) a threat to democracy in the US and that a second Trump presidency would be a disaster for our country. And yet, he had pledged to back whomever was his party’s nominee, even if it turned out to be Donald Trump.
And on Wednesday, Mitch McConnell made good on his promise. He officially endorsed for president of the United States of America the man upon whom he had publicly and emphatically laid the blame for the only violent incursion of our nation’s capitol since the British burned it down in 1814.
Shame on you, Mitch McConnell!
Most commentators are saying this was expected. They are probably right. But I held out hope.
I held out hope that McConnell would realize he no longer had anything to lose. What could Trump do to him at this point? No longer the party’s leader and probably not running for re-election, he would be free to openly state his disdain for the man.
I held out hope that he would finally take the opportunity to repay Trump in kind for all the nasty things Trump had said through the years about him and his wife, former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao.
Never miss a thing with our FREE weekly newsletter.
I held out hope that he would put country ahead of partisan politics just this once and do everything in his power — or at least one little swipe — to prevent a second Trump term.
I held out hope that McConnell would do the right thing, that he would act upon his true feelings and not the temperature of the day’s politics.
But I guess six decades of habit are hard to break. Mitch McConnell is, first and foremost, a crafty and conniving power broker.
Apparently, he’d rather be remembered for that than for saving American democracy.
