Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) might be the most powerful and consequential Senate leader in memory, Republican or Democrat. The Kentucky Republican gave conservatives a supermajority on the Supreme Court. He saved Donald Trump from two impeachments. And he's held the post longer than anybody else.
But it sure looks like his power over Senate Republicans is faltering.
McConnell is facing "one of the toughest challenges of his career this week," The Hill said, trying to gather votes for a bill that will both replenish funding for Ukraine and crack down on immigration. But that proposal has little support from his party. And McConnell may be forced to "abandon" the effort if he can't muster even 10 votes to help Democrats override the inevitable filibuster. "It's certainly been a challenge," he told reporters.
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Indeed, McClatchy said, right-wing Republicans are increasingly criticizing McConnell for being too willing to make deals with Democrats. "The problem is almost always Mitch McConnell," said Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation. McConnell's biggest challenge, though, is probably Trump himself. The former president "is propelling that rebellion" against the border deal, Politico said. The two men hardly love each other: McConnell "essentially disowned" Trump after Jan. 6, and the former president "has responded with regular attacks" on McConnell.
"It can be argued that McConnell is in a fix of his own making because he didn't push to try, convict and disqualify Trump for Jan. 6," Al Cross argued at Kentucky Lantern in McConnell's home state. Trump is now pushing against the immigration bill because he wants to run for president on the border issue. That means "some Republicans don't want to take yes for an answer." Now the future of Ukraine is at stake, and so is "the standing of the United States in the world." But those aren't the only issues hanging in the balance: So, too, is "how history will remember Mitch McConnell."
McConnell "is being forced to reckon with former President Donald Trump's hold on the GOP," Emily Jacobs added at the Washington Examiner. Supporting Trump's impeachment after Jan. 6 would have been a "political suicide mission," one political strategist told Jacobs, "the equivalent of getting a small dog to jump over Niagara Falls." But McConnell also believed that Trump had fatally wounded his political career after the insurrection. Said another observer: "Obviously, in hindsight, it was a miscalculation."
"McConnell's vaunted political acumen has failed him at critical times" since Trump took over the GOP, John David Dyche, a McConnell biographer, wrote at the Lexington Herald-Leader. McConnell did castigate Trump after Jan. 6, saying the former president's actions were "a disgraceful dereliction of duty." But he failed to press the impeachment, and now he's living with the results of a Trumpified GOP. "When the time for a McConnell obituary comes, that will be his legacy."
What next?
McConnell might actually have more support from his rival, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), than from his fellow Republicans. Both men have been trying to get the Ukraine-border bill passed. "I guess you could say I've got 99 problems but Mitch ain't one," Schumer joked at last week's Congressional Dinner. But their collective efforts may come to naught: Politico said the bill "is already close to failure." McConnell may have already accepted defeat: At a recent meeting with Senate Republicans, he "did not forcefully whip for or against the bill."
Meanwhile, the presidential election is approaching. Trump has all but wrapped up the nomination. But Spectrum News said that McConnell hasn't endorsed him as of yet. "I don't have any announcement to make on the presidential election," McConnell replied. "In fact, you all may recall I've stayed essentially out of it and when I change my mind about that, I'll let you know." Most observers believe, however, that "the question is not if McConnell will endorse Trump, but when." McConnell might be one of the most powerful and consequential GOP leaders in history. But even he is no match for Trump.
