Meet the Foolish ‘Conservatives’ Celebrating Mitch McConnell’s Departure

Isaac SchorrFeb 29th, 2024, 12:57 pm
 

LEFT: Mitch McConnell (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) RIGHT: Josh Hawley (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images)

On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced that he would abdicate his leadership position after spending nearly two decades in the role.

McConnell is almost inarguably the man most responsible for the constitutionalist majority on the Supreme Court.

In 2016, he held his conference together to deny Merrick Garland the seat left open by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.

Then he confirmed three fine jurists to the Court nominated by Donald Trump. Two of them, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, were confirmed by a razor-thin Republican majority under exceedingly difficult circumstances.

Despite those generationally significant accomplishments and many more besides them, McConnell’s exit from centerstage is being celebrated by many self-styled conservatives.

The House Freedom Caucus expressed mock sympathy for “our Democrat colleagues in the Senate on the retirement of their Co-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ukraine).”

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts concurred with the Freedom Caucus’s call for McConnell’s immediate replacement, declaring that “Americans deserve actual conservative leadership.”

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), who prevailed in his 2018 campaign in no small part because of McConnell’s financial support, insisted that “this is good news,” and smeared McConnell as caring more about “defense contractors” and corporations than the American people.

Hawley’s colleague Mike Lee (R-UT) took a shot at McConnell by suggesting that “the next Senate GOP leader should care more about our border security than Ukraine’s.”

And the increasingly irrelevant Conservative Political Action Conference risibly tried to take credit for McConnell’s decision.

There are some genuine philosophical differences between McConnell and his right-wing critics. McConnell believes that the United States should remain a global leader and push back on the emerging alliance developing between Russia, China, and Iran. In practice, that has meant supporting aid packages to Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel that many in the new Trumpian right oppose.

And speak of the devil, McConnell has an icy relationship with the once and likely future GOP standard bearer. Unlike Hawley, who cheered on Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election before fleeing them, McConnell opposed them and unequivocally condemned the then-president after the January 6 Capitol riot.

But none of this quite explains the vitriol directed at McConnell; for such an explanation, one must consider the self-interest of his most rabid opponents.

In order to pass partisan legislation in the United States, a party must in most cases boast control of the House of Representatives, presidency, and have 60 votes in the Senate.

This understandably frustrates ideological voters and activists, but it’s mostly the product of the system and a divided public, not weak-willed elected officials.

There are two ways of addressing this fact of American political life. The first is McConnell’s, who has used his position to diligently work toward the achievement of his party’s goals and the frustration of the opposition’s while accepting the fact that compromise is sometimes necessary.

The second, exemplified by his critics, is far less honorable. Instead of coming clean with voters about the limits of what is possible, they cast the more honest lot as traitors to the cause while presenting themselves as “principled” reformers for both pecuniary and political profit.

In truth, they’re better described as “unprincipled losers,” a modified version of the epithet they love to hurl at the GOP’s governing wing. How else can one characterize the group of people who repeatedly shut down the government with nothing to show for it, sabotaged the recent border bill negotiated by a McConnell ally, and continue to lose winnable elections?

If McConnell’s decision to step aside is cause for celebration for this cohort, it’s a loss for those genuinely interested in the success of the conservative movement.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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