A brand new United States Congress convenes in Washington, DC, on January 3. However for the primary time in 18 years, a key Republican chief will not be on the helm: Senator Mitch McConnell.
Since 2007, McConnell has served as head of the Republican Occasion within the Senate, steering members of his caucus by way of 4 completely different presidencies and numerous legislative hurdles.
Consultants say his tenure as the Senate’s longest-serving party leader will in the end be remembered as an inflexion level for Republicans and Congress as a complete.
Underneath McConnell, US politics moved away from the back-slappers and consensus-builders of earlier eras. As a substitute, McConnell helped to usher in a interval of norm-breaking, hyper-partisan politics that paved the way in which for figures like incoming President Donald Trump, the chief of the Make America Nice Once more (MAGA) motion.
“At first, he prolonged a pattern in minority obstruction within the Senate,” Steven S Smith, professor emeritus of political science at Washington College in St Louis, informed Al Jazeera.
Smith identified that McConnell led a Republican majority for less than six of his 18 years as Senate chief. The remainder of his tenure has been spent mobilising a minority within the 100-seat Senate to disrupt the agenda of the rival Democratic Occasion.
“Second, he shall be identified for deepening partisan polarisation within the Senate,” Smith mentioned. “Whereas McConnell just isn’t a conservative or MAGA extremist by right now’s requirements, he was a deeply partisan chief.”
Regardless of his dedication to the Republican Occasion, some see McConnell as a possible bulwark to figures like Trump, with whom he has clashed up to now.
Although he’s stepping down as party leader, McConnell intends to stay within the Senate for the rest of his six-year time period. However the extent to which McConnell will act as a test on Trump’s bold second-term agenda stays to be seen.
“I’d be very stunned to see him be provocative in a public manner. His affect goes underground,” Al Cross, a veteran reporter and columnist who coated McConnell’s tenure, informed Al Jazeera.
‘I normally play the villain’
McConnell has led an extended and storied profession within the Senate. In 1984, he made his first bid for a seat within the chamber, ousting an incumbent Democrat.
He has remained undefeated ever since. In 2020, he received his seventh straight time period.
His ascent to the highest of the Senate got here with out vital opposition. The 2007 retirement of the earlier Senate Republican chief, Invoice Frist, left the place vacant.
However even from his first days as a Senate chief, McConnell cultivated a popularity as a hardliner and obstructionist.
Throughout his first 12 months as Republican chief, The New York Occasions described him as working with “near-robotic effectivity” to smack down Democratic insurance policies, regardless of main a minority within the Senate.
“Mr McConnell and his fellow Republicans are enjoying such tight protection, blocking almost each invoice proposed by the slim Democratic majority that they’re more and more capable of dictate what they need,” reporter David Herszenhorn wrote.
McConnell shortly embraced his visibility as a partisan warrior, a self-described “grim reaper” for progressive proposals.
One editorial column nicknamed him “Senator No” for his refusal to work throughout the aisle. McConnell himself greeted reporters as soon as by saying, “Darth Vader has arrived.”
“Over the three many years I’ve been a US Senator, I’ve been the topic of many profiles,” McConnell wrote within the opening strains of his 2016 memoir. “I normally play the villain.”
Smith, the Washington College professor, described McConnell as sparking a “transformation” within the Senate because of his hardline strategy.
Earlier than McConnell’s management, Smith mentioned the Senate solely noticed “occasional minority obstruction”. However afterwards, the chamber turned identified in political circles because the “60-vote Senate”.
That nickname is a reference to the 60 votes required to beat a minority obstruction, in any other case generally known as a filibuster.
Underneath McConnell, Smith defined, “performing on laws of any significance would face minority obstruction and require 60 votes for cloture”.
Bending norms
One in every of McConnell’s most divisive moments got here in 2016, with the death of Supreme Courtroom Justice Antonin Scalia.
Usually, when a justice dies, the sitting president is entitled to appoint a substitute. However Scalia’s demise got here 11 months earlier than a pivotal presidential election. And the president on the time, Democrat Barack Obama, was nearing the top of his remaining time period.
McConnell made a surprising — and swift — political gamble. Inside hours of Scalia’s demise, the Republican chief introduced he would refuse to name a vote to substantiate Obama’s chosen substitute.
“The American individuals ought to have a voice within the number of their subsequent Supreme Courtroom Justice. Due to this fact, this emptiness shouldn’t be crammed till we have now a brand new president,” McConnell mentioned in an announcement.
Left-leaning publications like The Nation decried McConnell’s determination as an assault on the US Structure. “This refusal exploded norms,” journalist Alec MacGillis wrote within the publication ProPublica.
However McConnell’s gambit shifted the stability of energy on the courtroom for generations to come back.
That November, US voters elected Trump — a political newcomer — to his first time period within the White Home, setting the stage for extra shifts in Washington norms.
Trump in the end nominated three right-wing justices to the Supreme Courtroom, together with one to replace Scalia. That cemented a conservative super-majority on the bench, anticipated to mould US legislation for generations to come back.
Trump later credited McConnell as his “ace within the gap” and “accomplice”.
“Mitch acknowledged, as did I, that since judges take pleasure in life tenure, the influence of judicial nominations may be felt for thirty years or extra,” Trump wrote in a ahead to McConnell’s memoir. “Reworking the federal judiciary is the final word lengthy sport!”
A Trump rivalry
However within the lead-up to a brand new and emboldened Trump administration in 2025, McConnell has more and more spoken out towards the president-elect and his isolationist “America First” platform.
The 2 Republican leaders have repeatedly butted heads, and their relationship is notably frosty.
Trump has overtly referred to as McConnell an “outdated crow” and vilified his “China-loving spouse” Elaine Chao, a slap at her Asian heritage.
McConnell, in the meantime, has countered together with his personal preventing phrases, implying parallels between Trump and isolationism within the Thirties.
“We’re in a really, very harmful world proper now, paying homage to earlier than World Warfare II,” McConnell informed the Monetary Occasions in December. “Even the slogan is identical. ‘America First.’ That was what they mentioned within the ’30s.”
Upon vacating his management publish in January, McConnell is anticipated to tackle the function of chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Protection.
In his new place, he’s more likely to advocate for strengthening the US army to counter threats from adversaries like Russia, Iran and China.
But at age 82, with health challenges together with a current fall, consultants say McConnell is unlikely to supply a lot resistance to the incoming Trump administration.
“Since Senator McConnell is out of his management place and given his bodily frailty, I’m not anticipating a lot in the way in which of sustained opposition from him,” Harvard College political scientist Daniel Ziblatt informed Al Jazeera.
“It’s potential he could forged a dissenting vote right here or there that may make a distinction. However his observe report doesn’t depart me holding my breath.”
No higher institutionalist
Nonetheless, Herbert Weisberg, a professor of political science at The Ohio State College, anticipates that McConnell could act as an occasional dissenting voice, notably because the Senate weighs a few of Trump’s controversial nominees for high-level authorities posts.
“He’d usually need to defer to a Republican president on appointees, however he’ll be cautious on the weird Trump nominees. He is likely to be keen to vote towards a number of, however not all of them,” Weisberg informed Al Jazeera.
Already, McConnell — a childhood polio survivor — issued a public warning to incoming administration officers to “avoid” efforts “to undermine public confidence” in “confirmed cures”, lest they scuttle their Senate affirmation hearings.
The assertion got here instantly after Trump well being nominee Robert F Kennedy Jr was linked to an effort to revoke approval for the polio vaccine in The New York Occasions.
However a single Republican is unlikely to stall a nomination or piece of laws, as Steven Okun, an analyst on US politics, authorities and commerce, identified.
Republicans maintain a 53-person majority within the incoming Senate. And plenty of within the get together are firmly behind Trump’s management.
Assuming a united Democratic opposition, “4 Republican senators can be wanted to cease something a future President Trump places forth to the Senate,” Okun defined.
McConnell, Okun added, is unlikely to tackle the function of dissenter — “solely when Donald Trump pursues essentially the most aggressive actions which might run counter to the US nationwide curiosity”.
In any case, get together loyalty has been a key tenet of McConnell’s management. And consultants like Cross, the journalist, imagine McConnell received’t need to miss a chance to make use of the facility of the Senate to form presidential coverage.
“I can’t consider any higher institutionalist than Mitch McConnell,” Cross mentioned. “He loves the Senate, it’s what he’s aspired to. He doesn’t need to surrender its function in recommendation and consent.”
