US Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) offers a thumbs up whereas arriving on the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as President Donald Trump’s director of nationwide intelligence on the Senate Chambers on February 12, 2025, in Washington, DC.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Getty Photographs)
It’s arduous to say imply issues a couple of fragile politician in a wheelchair, within the twilight of his political profession and his life, too, who’s lastly attempting to do one thing respectable. Approaching 83, struggling a number of well being points, having ceded management and doubtless not working once more, former GOP Senate majority chief Mitch McConnell is all of a sudden mustering the integrity to vote towards a few of Donald Trump’s worst cupboard nominees, together with Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and, on Thursday, Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On Gabbard and Kennedy, he was the lone Republican “no” vote.
It’s arduous to not see this as a belated try to salvage his political legacy, after a 40-year Senate profession, to clarify he wasn’t behind the very worst of Trumpism, now that Trump is empowering fascists and would-be quislings, to not point out folks totally unqualified for his or her positions (and that features appearing president Elon Musk). I’m a reasonably forgiving individual, extra prepared to welcome Republicans into the favored entrance towards Trump—even Liz Cheney—than lots of my colleagues on the left. The McConnell spectacle is tragic. However I can’t muster the charity to reward the Kentucky senator for his belated and ineffective valor. When he had tight management of Senate Republicans, he didn’t use his energy towards Trump. Now that he’s powerless, he’s making quixotic feints at integrity and independence. It’s not convincing.
That’s as a result of Mitch McConnell is single-handedly the Republican most liable for Trump’s takeover of his occasion. It started when he empowered the worst (on the time) components of the GOP simply as Barack Obama bought elected president. Simply earlier than the 2010 midterms, he declared, “The only most necessary factor we need to obtain is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” He refused to push again on Trump’s racist declare that Obama wasn’t born right here and was thus an illegitimate president, meekly saying he accepted Obama’s “phrase,” which tacitly ignored that there was proof that Trump was mendacity.
And whereas McConnell couldn’t deny Obama a second time period, he successfully reduce it by a full 12 months, when he openly blocked the president’s appointment of Merrick Garland to succeed über-conservative Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Courtroom the January earlier than Obama left workplace. He would abandon his 2016 argument by pushing by means of conservative Christian lawyer Amy Coney Barrett to switch Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not a 12 months however a month earlier than the 2020 election, which Joe Biden received.
If Obama bought the appointment he had a proper to, and Biden bought to switch Ginsburg when he assumed workplace in 2021, Democrats would have a 5–4 Supreme Courtroom majority.
McConnell’s judicial coup ensured that Trump bought three Supreme Courtroom picks in his first time period, and that 6–3 conservative majority not solely overthrew Roe v. Wade’s constitutional abortion protections but additionally discovered final 12 months that Trump loved broad immunity from prison prosecution for “official” actions he undertook as president—together with fomenting the violent sacking of the Capitol and tried coup on January 6, 2021. That pulled the rug out from below particular counsel Jack Smith, whose meticulous case prosecution may basically go nowhere as Trump ran out the clock and received reelection.
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Equally unhealthy, nonetheless, after McConnell blamed Trump personally for the riot, calling him “virtually and morally accountable,” and instructed he would possibly even be a part of an impeachment push, he refused to vote to convict Trump after the Home impeached him. He additionally refused to whip his largely obedient GOP Senate members. Seven Senate Republicans voted to convict Trump nonetheless, including as much as 57 senators in help, however the regulation requires two-thirds. McConnell instructed that the appropriate end result is likely to be the prison prosecution of the president; the conservative court docket majority he put in made that inconceivable.
I’m not even delving into McConnell’s different political misdeeds—chief amongst them the Residents United determination overturning bipartisan marketing campaign finance reform and enabling the noxious flood of darkish cash into American politics. He did many unhealthy issues, however the way in which he empowered Trump and expanded his management in so some ways will at all times be the worst.
A couple of respectable votes received’t change that, Mitch. However I’m positive you’ve gotten of us round you who will let you know in any other case.
