Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is finished. The 82-year-old fixture of the Senate, having already stepped down as the longest-serving GOP leader in the body’s history, announced Thursday that he won’t be running for an eighth term next year. McConnell’s decision to retire caps a political career during which he never showed the same interest as his colleagues over the years in moving down the street to the White House.
“Serving as Republican Leader was a rare — and, yes, rather specific — childhood dream,” he said in his farewell address. It’s the sort of thing that would seem a bit much from most politicians, but I believe McConnell has loved being a senator. But while I have no doubt for his affection for the upper chamber, it cannot be ignored that he’ll be leaving it a weaker, more broken institution than it was when he arrived.
When it comes down to it, McConnell has always been a man of his principles, even when those principles are garbage.
When it comes down to it, McConnell has always been a man of his principles, even when those principles are garbage. Because at his core, McConnell has been committed to no higher cause than the acquisition of power for his party. I gave a more complete rundown of his political arc last year when he said that he wouldn’t try to retain his place atop the Senate GOP caucus. But the lowlights include his abuse of the filibuster, his willingness to allow Trump to escape conviction for his impeachments, blocking one Supreme Court seat vacancy during an election year before rushing another mere days ahead of another, and his quest to allow endless dark money to flow into Washington.
McConnell’s Thursday speech didn’t point directly to any of that, instead more broadly speaking about his commitment to delivering for Kentuckians and praising the Senate’s role in the constitutional order. But he spoke on the Senate floor immediately before voting to confirm the unqualified conspiracy theorist Kash Patel as the next director of the FBI in one of the biggest rejections of the Senate’s responsibility to advise the president on his recommendations rather than simply consenting to them.
The vote to end debate on Patel was close, 51-49, after Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted against the nominee. Vice President JD Vance, whose vote would be needed to break a tie, wasn’t in the Capitol. McConnell had previously joined Murkowski and Collins in voting against Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, forcing Vance to break the tie; and he’d been the lone GOP senator to vote against Tulsi Gabbard to become the director of national intelligence. So there were some holding out hope that McConnell would vote no on Patel.
It’s darkly ironic that the master strategist is unwilling to see how much he helped erode his beloved Senate. But voting against Hegseth and Gabbard was acceptable in McConnell’s calculus because it wouldn’t matter in the final tally. His previous displays of faux protest neither minimized the GOP’s command of power nor negatively impacted a Republican presidency. But it would have been an embarrassment for Trump in the micro, and the GOP in the macro, if a Republican blocked the nominee for FBI director from assuming his role. He wouldn’t dare give Democrats an opportunity to fundraise or cut ads highlighting that McConnell had tanked a Trump nominee’s confirmation, thereby risking the Republican control of the Senate after he’s gone. When then-President-elect Trump suggested last year that the Senate should step aside and let him name his Cabinet via recess appointments, there was enough opposition from Senate Republicans for him to back away from the idea. But the GOP caucus hasn’t has shown any willingness since then to protect its rights and authorities. By confirming even the least qualified of Trump’s nominees in exchange for nothing from the White House, refusing to condemn Trump’s usurpation of their spending power, and generally yielding to the president as the only source of power in the country, there’s been little of the pride for the title “senator” on display from McConnell’s Republican cohorts. “Regardless of the political storms that may wash over this chamber during the time I have remaining, I assure our colleagues that I will depart with great hope for the endurance of the Senate as an institution,” McConnell proclaimed toward the end of his address. But it’s darkly ironic that the master strategist is unwilling to see how much he helped erode his beloved Senate. More than any specific moment of crisis, his commitment to party politics over the institution of the Senate itself threatened its future as anything more than a rubber stamp for whoever is currently president.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
