Longest-running Senate majority leader delivers impassioned plea against term limits

19 June 2024

Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) may not be pursuing another term as the top Republican in the upper chamber of Congress, but he's encouraging his next successor to not weaken the position.

Punchbowl News reported this week that during a meeting with Senate Republicans, McConnell particularly warned his colleagues against imposing term limits for a Senate Republican leader, saying that ceding power to the caucus could result in the same kind of chaos currently plaguing the House of Representatives' Republican majority.

Andrew Desiderio, who covers Congress for Punchbowl, tweeted that McConnell called the proposed abolition of term limits "totally inappropriate." Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who is running for GOP leader, has endorsed the idea of term limits, McConnell countered by saying "we have term limits — they’re called elections."

McConnell, who has been in the U.S. Senate since 1985, is not only one of the longest-serving senators of all time (Sen. Robert Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia, still holds the record at 51 years) but he's also the longest-serving leader of a party in the Senate. McConnell has been the Senate's top Republican since 2007, and argued his experience as party leader has served the GOP well as a result.

"McConnell said term limits would make it harder for the leader to build a donor network and the type of political operation necessary to raise massive sums of cash — a crucial element of the job. The McConnell-aligned super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, has been central to this," Punchbowl's Max Cohen wrote. "To further underscore his point, McConnell named Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri), saying Schmitt wouldn’t be in the Senate today if not for [the Senate Leadership Fund]. McConnell has used a variation of this line before when he argues that term limits would make it harder for the leader to do what’s necessary in the era of Citizens United."

Term limits remain a divisive topic among political analysts. On one side, proponents argue that term limits ensure that new ideas and new leadership remains constant, and it prevents one person from using the power of incumbency to muzzle dissent and prevent differing ideas from being considered. But opponents of term limits believe that automatically forcing experienced leaders out of power regularly will make it so political neophytes are always in prominent decision-making positions.

"Nothing renders government more unstable than a frequent change of the persons that administer it," Sen. Roger Sherman (Federalist Party-Massachusetts) wrote in a 1778 open letter.

Another senator hoping to succeed McConnell as the GOP's leader is Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida). He is reportedly aiming to take a different approach to leadership, arguing that the "will of the majority" should dictate how the leader approaches the job.

Punchbowl reported that Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), who is considered one of the more moderate members of the Senate Republican conference, cautioned against this approach. He cited the bipartisan Safer Communities Act (passed after the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas) as one example of legislation that wouldn't have passed had the party's leader been directed by the members of the conference.

"McConnell noted that if he had to listen to the majority of his conference on every legislative item, the government would never be funded and the debt limit would never be raised," Cohen wrote.

Click here to read Punchbowl's report in full.

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