The downfall of Mitch McConnell
With the Democrats having officially won the Senate race in Arizona, and the numbers strongly suggesting that the Democrats will also win the Senate race in Nevada, the Republicans will likely have already lost any shot at the Senate majority before even getting to the Georgia runoff. Accordingly, Senate Republicans appear to be turning on Mitch McConnell rather quickly – and perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising.
Republican Senators have long been uniformly and devoutly loyal to McConnell, but it’s not because they like him. It’s because he delivers results. He’s long used Super PAC money to help them win reelection races. And he’s skilled at exploiting Senate rules to make it easier for a Republican majority to get things done, or harder for a Democratic majority to move swiftly.
But the thing about right wing politicians is they’re only in it to benefit themselves. Up to now, the best way for Republican Senators and Republican Senate candidates to benefit themselves was to fall in line with McConnell and share in the rewards. But after the Republicans lost the Senate majority in 2020, they’ve (apparently) failed to take it back in 2022. And while much of that blame goes on Donald Trump’s insistence on backing terrible candidates in Republican primary races, it was ultimately McConnell who failed to get Trump’s weak candidates over the finish line. Whether it was McConnell’s fault or not, it was McConnell’s failure.
So it’s not shocking that other Republican Senators are now using media leaks to take pot shots at McConnell. They just spent two years without the majority power needed to make their mega-donors happy, and now they’re facing the prospect of having to go another two years without that power. That’s a long time for greedy crooks to wait for the grift machine to be turned back on, and they seem to be growing impatient already. Throw in the fact that McConnell is 80 years old and there were media reports earlier this year about him supposedly considering early retirement if the Republicans lost the 2022 midterms, and it’s easy to see why Republican Senators might be ready to simply move on.
Mitch McConnell has been seemingly invincible for a long time. You count him out at your own peril. But he’s on the verge of losing two Senate election cycles in a row, and there are other crooks in his Senate Republican caucus who appear ready to move on. They know without McConnell, they’ll collectively be less politically savvy when it comes to winning political battles. But if they lack majority power going forward anyway, McConnell’s savvy won’t be of much use to them. So they’d rather just skip to the part where they throw strategy out the window, and begin indiscriminately lining their pockets as frantically as they can, without regard for whether such moves will set them up for long term success or not.
In that sense the Republican Senate is in danger of becoming a lot more like the Republican House: leaderless, incoherent, unhinged. That’s not an environment in which a calculated leader like Mitch McConnell can prosper – especially not without majority power. Again, you don’t count someone like McConnell out until you see him walk out the door. But while his downfall may be far from complete, at the least his downfall has now begun.
