by Alexis Simendinger & Kristina Karisch | The Hill
If anyone needed more evidence that the Republican Party has moved dramatically from an activist world view to a militant brand of “America First,” Wednesday offered some fresh exhibits.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), 82, the longest serving Senate leader in history, said he would step down in November from his role leading his party but serve out his term, which ends in 2027. After planning his surprise announcement since January, he immediately became a lame duck.
One of the most partisan Senate strategists and infamous obstructionists during decades of divided government, McConnell these days is derided by House conservatives as a turncoat and Democratic appeaser because of his support for additional U.S. aid to Ukraine, which Senate Democrats and President Biden want to enact. House firebrands assail his opposition to government shutdowns — which they believe could bolster their arguments for smaller government and less spending — and decry his purposeful nurturing of a bipartisan border security bill that recently died in the Senate under the weight of former President Trump’s opposition. McConnell’s far-right critics, now closer to Trump than they are to the Reaganite era that greeted the Kentucky senator when he was first elected in 1984, cheered his decision to step down from leadership.
- The Hill: “Three Johns” lead the race to succeed McConnell.
- The Hill: McConnell’s exit surprises GOP: “It’s Trump’s party now.”
- Politico: As McConnell steps down, Ukraine loses a powerful GOP mega booster.
“McConnell dug his own grave and is attempting to pull the rest of the GOP in with him,” Bradley Devlin wrote in The American Conservative, describing the party’s border security skirmishes. “Instead of using the GOP conference as added leverage for [Louisiana Republican Speaker Mike] Johnson and the GOP, McConnell is leaving Johnson high and dry,” he continued.
First-term Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), who was 4 years old when McConnell was elected to the Senate, faulted the minority leader in Devlin’s article.
You’re the supposed Republican leader of the United States Senate, not the chief fundraising coordinator for Ukraine,” Crane said. “Americans are being killed because the Biden Administration has cruelly opened our borders and Republican leadership has consistently and corruptly diverted their attention away. We need real leadership, not cowardly controlled opposition.”
The Hill’s Niall Stanage describes “an angrier, more performative style” of GOP politics that supplanted the traditional Republicanism McConnell embodied. Pragmatists are part of the GOP Senate, but if Trump is elected again, the former president’s influence on the “cooling saucer” upper chamber will be no surprise.
As McConnell spoke Wednesday, a last-minute, short-term funding accord to avert a weekend shutdown took shape. Leaders from both parties said they agreed to hold a vote on a stopgap funding bill by Friday to avoid a partial government shutdown this weekend, followed by votes next month on full-year spending measures. All 100 senators must agree to move quickly on passing legislation, a consensus that is not guaranteed.
Biden — who has worked with (and against) McConnell over the decades on legislation, nominees and to avert shutdowns, fiscal cliffs and potential U.S. defaults — said of the senator Wednesday, “I’ve trusted him, and we have a great relationship. We fight like hell. But he has never, never, never misrepresented anything.”
McConnell has been credited (and faulted) for helping to stock the judiciary with Republican appointees, and he helped Trump tilt the Supreme Court to the right. But the two soured on one another during Trump’s term and have not spoken since December 2020. Their investment in the court resurfaced Wednesday when the former president thanked justices for their decision to hear his claim of absolute immunity for any actions and decisions he made as president. A high court ruling could impact the government’s pending prosecution of Trump on federal criminal charges in Washington and Florida, as well as in Georgia in a complex racketeering case.
Trump and his legal team are working to postpone his trials until after November.
3 Things to Remember
- 🩺 Biden’s doctors, who evaluated the president Wednesday during an annual physical exam at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, said in a statement that the 81-year-old is “fit for duty” after undergoing an “extremely detailed” neurological exam that did not turn up evidence of stroke, neurological disorders or Parkinson’s disease. He did not undergo a cognitive screening because his doctor did not believe it was necessary. “Everything’s great,” the president said.
- ✈️ The Justice Department is scrutinizing the midair blowout last month of a Boeing door plug on an Alaska Airlines flight, a process that could expose the company to criminal prosecution.
- 💉Americans 65 and older, considered a medically vulnerable group, should get a second dose of the 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine, an expert panel with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Wednesday.