A defense mechanism I have adopted since the election of Donald Trump, a man more deserving of prison than the presidency, is to look for reasons for even the slightest optimism about the governance of the nation over the next four years. To that end, this Thanksgiving I am grateful for the Republican decision. “The Grim Reaper” Mitch McConnell.
Actually.
Yes, I'm saying I'm grateful for the bitter Kentucky senator who has built a legacy turkey: fighting for years, up to a conservative Supreme Court, to successfully achieve decapitate limits on campaign contributions from corporations and special interests. Stuffed that court and the lower courts with far-right jurists. Finally, engineering Trump's acquittal in the Senate after the House impeached him for inciting an insurrection that vandalized the Capitol McConnell professes to revere.
opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical look to the national political scene. He has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
It is thanks to that latest McConnell “achievement” that we face Trump 2.0. If the Senate had convicted Trump in February 2021, it likely would have continued with one vote to prevent him from running for office again, as the Senate has done with accused and convicted judges.
So here we are, and so is McConnell.
At 82, the longest-serving party leader in Senate history is voluntarily handing his crown to Sen. John Thune of South Dakota. He will serve the last two years of his seventh and perhaps last term among the rank and file of the Republican majority. It's only fair for McConnell to suffer a demotion when Trump returns to the summit: For all of McConnell's past services to the former and future president, since January 6 the two men have hated each other more than I hate each other. marshmallows with sweet potatoes.
Although McConnell is familiar with power, he is acutely aware of who holds it now. Still, he will not lack influence in Trump's Washington. He will not retreat to the back benches or bend his knee. He even enjoys Trump's school nickname for him: “Old Crow” – handing out bottles of Kentucky bourbon with their mug on the label.
McConnell may be stooped with age, but he is suggesting publicly and privately that he will rise to the occasion as the leader of a Republican resistance in the Senate, providing cover for others, should Trump overreach. The president-elect has already done so with some grotesque Cabinet elections, preceded by his unconstitutional demand that senators lose their power of “advice and consent” and instead become seals of approval. McConnell's almost immediate response was “By no means.”
If Trump, as president, carries out his threat to illegally confiscate funds get Congress to pass, hope McConnell whines badly, and even support a court challenge. Above all, look to McConnell, who chair the defense spending subcommittee—to defend continued U.S. leadership in the world, especially in support of Ukraine and NATO. That stance is sure to irritate an “America First” president enamored of dictators and disdainful of allies.
“Opposition to Ukraine is as absurd as [saying] “Biden was not legitimately elected,” McConnell says biting back at Trump in a new biography, “The Price of Power.”
I'm not naive. McConnell will back many of Trump's actions, including offering a bounty of unaffordable new tax cuts for the rich and corporations, urging Americans to gorge on fossil fuels, and once again packing the courts with right-wing ideologues.
However, remember the old proverb: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
As ruthless and transgressive as McConnell has been on judicial confirmations and beyond, I bet he will respect the institutional and constitutional lines that Trump disdainfully crosses and recruit some other Republican senators to help maintain those lines. A few Republicans are all that is needed when the party's majority is 53 to 47; Trump stands to lose only four votes if Democrats are united in opposition. I count up to a dozen Republicans who could take turns opposing Trump from time to time, which would dilute the political pain of Trump's anger.
About Trump's nominations, for example. Ex-convict Stephen K. Bannon, among other MAGA activists, guilty McConnell (“Give the devil his due”) for stoking opposition that forced unsavory former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida off the menu as Trump’s nominee for attorney general. Publicly, McConnell was no coward either, responding to Trump's call to let nominees pass during recess appointments.
“Each of these nominees must go before the Senate, go through the process and be vetted,” McConnell. saying Two weeks ago. The institutionalist in him knows that, under the Constitution, the Senate's power to confirm nominees is equal to the president's power to appoint them.
Among those he could help defeat are Trump's worst picks: Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominees to head intelligence, defense and health, respectively. McConnell, a polio survivor, surely chokes up Kennedy's anti-vaccine rhetoric. The same for Gabbard and Hegseth echoes of Trump's skepticism and Vladimir Putin's talking points about Ukraine.
McConnell has little to lose. He will be freed in the new Congress, he told his biographer, Michael Tackett, who no longer needs as party leader to cater to the appetites of moderate Republicans and MAGA alike. He is not expected to seek re-election in 2026. Of course, he is unpopular nationally, in both parties. But within the Senate, most Republicans respect and even like him. His enormous position there will be parallel to that of the former speaker of the House of Representatives and GOAT Nancy Pelosi, whom praised last month: “I think Pelosi has done a pretty good job as a former speaker and can still speak up and have an audience.”
Similarly, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina provided McConnell's, “When he speaks, people listen.”
Forget the turkey. I'm going to bring the popcorn. And supporting Old Crow.
@jackiekcalmes
