Mitch McConnell has totally checked out
This weekend Donald Trump decided to fire off everything left in his arsenal, in one big final push at trying to prevent the nation’s growing desire for impeachment from taking hold. He sent everyone from Rudy Giuliani to Stephen Miller to Jim Jordan onto the Sunday morning talk show circuit. He tweeted threats of “civil war” in the hope of rallying his deranged base. But through it all, something was missing.
Where is Mitch McConnell in all this? Nowhere. Not only is he the Senate Majority Leader, he’s also the last real powerbroker remaining in the Republican Party. He’s deeply unpopular with the public, but that doesn’t matter. He largely controls the purse strings for the reelection campaigns of the Republican Senators, which means they’re always tempted to go along with whatever he says. That’s why it’s so notable that he isn’t saying anything.
Mitch McConnell could instruct his Republican Senators to go out there and defend Donald Trump right now, to push Trump’s deranged conspiracy theories, and to argue against the merits of impeachment. But McConnell clearly hasn’t done that, because if he had, we’d be hearing from more GOP Senators than just human dumpster fire Lindsey Graham right now.
It’s not that Mitch McConnell is sitting down by the river, twiddling his thumbs, and wondering what to do with himself. He’s a far more skilled political operative than that. His relative silence on impeachment is a calculated one. Every day that McConnell doesn’t defend Trump against impeachment, public opinion shifts further in favor of impeachment, to the point where the GOP Senate may end up having to oust him just to protect its own reelection chances. McConnell knows it too. He’s totally checked out of the impeachment debate, and he’s letting Trump take himself down. Interesting choice.
