Weakened 'ruthless' Mitch McConnell wields minimal influence in 2025
On Thursday, February 20, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) formally announced that he will not seek reelection in 2026. The announcement didn't come as a surprise: McConnell, who turned 83 that day, wasn't expected to seek an eighth term after stepping down as GOP leader in the U.S. Senate. But the announcement on McConnell's 83rd birthday made it official.
The New Republic's Grace Segers examines McConnell's complex relationship with the Republican Party in an article published on February 26.
"Even considering his influence in shaping the modern Republican Party," Segers explains, "his vision does not represent its future. Despite his significant role in ensuring the election of President Donald Trump in 2016 — as well as shepherding some of the president's greatest legislative victories through Congress during his first term — McConnell is not the avatar of Trumpism. Instead, he is viewed with suspicion by Trump and his allies, including some of those Republican lawmakers that he helped put in office."
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McConnell did a lot to push the U.S. Supreme Court to the hard-right, blocking former President Barack Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, in 2016 and supporting all three of President Donald Trump's High Court picks: Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. The High Court now has a 6-3 GOP-appointed supermajority thanks, in part, to McConnell.
Yet McConnell, first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984, isn't popular in the GOP's MAGA wing. And there have been major tensions between McConnell and Trump.
"There was a brief period of time in which McConnell’s methodical, ruthless political style imbued him with a sort of 'folk heroism' among Republicans, said (GOP strategist Liam) Donovan. McConnell's willingness to block Obama’s agenda — as well as his Supreme Court nominee — and his efforts in pushing through Trump's judicial nominees cemented his reputation as a political fighter," Segers notes. "McConnell also helped push through the massive tax cuts that became one of Trump's major legislative achievements in 2017…. But their mutual tolerance was not long-lasting."
Segers continues, "In the wake of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, by a violent mob seeking to overturn the presidential election results, McConnell blamed Trump for the 'disgraceful' actions of his supporters during the insurrection; the relationship between the two men has remained frosty in the years since, despite McConnell's endorsement of Trump's reelection bid in 2024."
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Despite the "mutual distaste" Trump and McConnell feel for one another, Segers observes, McConnell "held an indirect role in ensuring Trump’s political resurrection" in 2024.
Segers quotes GOP strategist Liam Donovan as saying, "I think (Trump's) greatest successes, ironically, occurred when he and McConnell were working together in a sort of transactional way, both on the political side and on the legislative side."
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Read Grace Segers' full article for The New Republic at this link.
