Mitch McConnell is stepping down as Republican leader in the Senate. Good riddance to him.
Still, his departure reminds me of the resignation/firing of Jeff Sessions as attorney general in 2018. When Sessions was initially appointed he seemed to us liberals like pretty much the worst, most ultra-conservative, quasi-racist attorney general imaginable. Then he got replaced by Bill Barr, and we discovered that at least Sessions had a certain Southern-inflected personal sense of integrity. Barr didn't. The worst turned out not to be the worst after all.
The same is true of McConnell. As bad as he's been for the Senate, he has limits. January 6 was too much for him. Trump is too much for him. Betraying Ukraine is too much for him.
So far, McConnell's potential successors are fairly mainstream Republicans, but the voting hasn't happened yet and you never know who we'll get. It's hardly inconceivable that we could do even worse than McConnell. As always, be careful what you wish for.
"Can we do worse than..."
Every time this question is asked about an outgoing Republican, the answer has always been a resounding YES.
Yes, this 100%. Reagan. Then W. Then the worst person in the US. Dole, McConnell, ... Cruz?
Boehner, Ryan, McCarthy, Johnson
Each one worse than the last.
Back when my faith in the country was stronger than it is today, I used to think we hit absolute bottom with W. I was convinced I would die knowing he was he worst president in my lifetime, and probably in our history. That was even before he got us into the stupidest war in our history. And what did we do? We reelected the idiot. But he left office in disgrace. Surely, we had learned our lesson about him and Republicans. That was a fair way to look at it. Until 2016.
The reasons we keep electing Republicans are deep and fundamental, and the challenges of engineering a course correction are immense. Yet I refuse to think our descent into the abyss is inevitable. I have a son and have hope for his generation, and I believe it's still possible to put the cork back in the bottle and say, "No more!"
Because if we don't quit this terrible addiction of pretending any politician with an R after his name is anything but trouble, we will only find out how wrong we were when we get the full Adolph.
“The reasons we keep electing Republicans are deep and fundamental…”
They aren’t deep. We keep electing Republicans because (1) so much of the structure of House districts, Senate apportionment and the Electoral College gives rural people more power and they are enthrall to the GOP and (2) in a duopolistic political party system, often the only way to get rid of individual shitty Democrats is to purposefully elect a Republican. (Yes technically Independents can win but realistically 99% of the time if you want to get rid of a shitty Democrat, you’re going to have to elect a Republican.) And the Democratic Party has no way to keep individual shitty people from sneaking into the tent and running on their brand.
Oh and (3) the Democratic Party, in all its wisdom, allows hundreds of seats every year to go uncontested. That doesn’t help either: kind of hard to blame people for voting R if only one name was on the ballot.
Does not make sense to lump in Reagan era Republicans with Trump era Republicans. MAGA is poison to the country. Reagan era Republicans were mostly mainstream. They are put down as RINOs by Trumpers today.
For reference, presidential historians rank Reagan around 10th among presidents, and they rank Trump in the bottom three. Trump and Trumpers are a whole different breed.
"January 6 was too much for him. Trump is too much for him. Betraying Ukraine is too much for him."
Were they? What did he actually do about either? As far as I recall a whole lot of nothing.
+1
It was not he voted to acquit trump. Kevin is lying.
The only question is "Who will Trump pick?"
Decide upon his most craven, canine toady in the Senate; that's your leader.
Lindsey Graham and Ron Johnson are the longest-serving senators that are 100% on board the Trump train...
Tommy Tuberville, it is!
It's all well and good to be rhetorically anti-1/6, anti-Trump, or pro-Ukraine, but none of it means a lot if you consistently abandon those positions in the face of the slightest challenge. This is a guy who couldn't even vote for impeachment a couple weeks after 1/6. I think if we have a more MAGA ideological (but less effective as a result) Republican majority leader, that's actually a huge win.
This is a good point, but there's danger in it, as we're seeing play out in the House. Inexperienced and incompetent leadership there is giving us almost the same results as malevolent leadership, with the added benefit of system breakdown. Breakdown is what trump wants, so imagine Tuberville as majority leader next year (trump would think "well he was a coach so he must know how to run things!! and besides he's right out of central casting"). That's next year's doomsday machine-- trump, Tuberville, and Johnson, and would be exactly what trump wants. He'd be happy with any senator who can fog a mirror and follow instructions on confirming whatever malevolent toadies he names for executive slots.
“This is a good point, but there's danger in it, as we're seeing play out in the House. Inexperienced and incompetent leadership there is giving us almost the same results as malevolent leadership, with the added benefit of system breakdown.”
You can’t save people who don’t want to be saved. Incompetence might be worse than malevolence (although I personally disagree) but it doesn’t matter anyway. None of us liberal or centrist voters are going to have any say whatsoever in selecting whatever freakshow the hardcore right-wing replaces McConnell with. So why worry about it? They’ll pick the next in a long line of sick evil fcks to run the Senate GOP conference, and the rest of us will just have to live with it.
Because they'll be the next majority leader and then Ukraine will be conquered by Russia.
I wouldn't rule out "malevolence" in the case of the House and Big Mike Johnson. It's clear that he cares nothing about the well-being of the United States nor its people, just about his exalted position and his party, which is the wholly-owned property of one Donald Trump. He's a Trump puppet who makes biblical sounds to justify his unchristian behavior.
A self-serving hypcrite and toady, in other words. Sounds fairly wicked/malevolent to me.
"malevolent toadies", haha. Funny, but also a good description.
I'm worried about the same thing.
If you mean more effective, I'd guess that's an extremely hard act to follow. Worse politics is pretty easy.
That's the point, exactly. Will he be followed by someone crazier? Probably. Will the next person be as effective as McConnell, who was the most effective majority leader since Lyndon Johnson? Almost certainly not.
Since he's not retiring, one assumes there's a reason beyond age for his stepping down from leadership after the general election.
Could it be because he's not going to endorse Trump?
Or he'd rather spend time grooming a successor in his home state instead of herding cats. His party is changing, rapidly, so it almost seems like he's leaving the national Party but not his home state.
Perhaps the mini-strokes are playing a part? If he’s not the leader, he won’t be in front of cameras every day, and thus won’t be caught as often having another spinning wheel “still buffering” glitch. As we saw with Feinstein, the Senate is a rest home for really old people, and so he doesn’t want to leave it, he just might want to stop people from talking smack about him as he convalesces.
Doesn't seem like those were TIAs, petit mal, or mini-strokes. They were probably a neurological issue related to his fall which resulted in a concussion.
In 2021, if the GOP and McConnel had the balls to convict Orange Jesus and bare him from office, the world would have been freed from the threat of him coming back in 2024. Instead, the Golem that the GOP created and allowed to exist is still on the loose.
Doesn't help Biden that old Turkey Neck is departing his leadership role because he is too old at 82.
Why on earth would you say this? This is transparently not true.
McConnell voted to acquit Trump in both his Ukraine-related impeachment and his January 6th impeachment. He has committed to endorsing Trump for President again; he has already said he'll endorse the eventual nominee whoever it is, and that's Trump.
So no. January 6th wasn't too much for McConnell. Neither is Trump.
On the first one, that was always going to be a party-line thing, and he whipped it.
On the second, he did not whip the vote, but said it was a conscience vote. I think if he had been the 67th vote to convict, he would have cast that vote. He's such a political animal though, he is unlikely to make himself a target for no good reason. I mean, "If you go for the king, be sure not to miss." I'm sure he knows that.
He did not join the group who voted against confirming Biden's win in the election, for instance.
There's some nuance here. I guess you don't see it.
Nah. Mitch gave the rationale for voting to acquit -- he's out of office now -- having deliberately set it up that way. He could have convened the impeachment trial within DAYS of Jan 6 ... but did not. When Schumer, who should have been the majority leader then, begged for a date, McConnell
Why on earth would you say this?
Kevin likes to play the crank, but in reality the SoCal sunshine makes him prone to excessive, erm, sunniness, and optmism. He's a glass half full kinda guy, especially when it comes to Republicans. He probably had a lot of Republican neighbors growing up who were non-crazy country club types, and were pleasant and personable in their daily interactions. Maybe even a few cousins.
(Orange County has plenty of Birchers, too, back in the day, but I doubt they were all like that. Most of them just wanted low taxes.)
In a speech on the Senate floor, McConnell said: "The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people". McConnell saw Jan 6 for what it was and spoke out about it. But then he lacked the courage to vote to have Trump removed from office.
Meh. Of course the next GOP leader will be worse than the last one. It’s a series of evil Russian nesting dolls, all the way down.
McConnell can DIAF and fck off to hell. Hopefully he takes the resident trolls on here with him.
McConnell will leave his leadership post because he's afraid the Senate may swing D and he will NOT accept blame for that. His successor will
Along with the MAGA crowd.
It's a stretch, but it COULD happen
January 6 was too much for Mitch until, what, January 10?
Not gonna miss him, I hope.
"Can we do worse than Mitch McConnell?"
Republican Party: Challenge accepted.
Can we do worse? Two words: Josh Hawley.
And in any event McConnell has lost his fast ball. So the next GOP leader will be both A) more extreme and B) more effective.
For the record I'm pretty sure Hawley is widely loathed by his Republican colleagues.
Josh Hawley -- the weasel of weasels.
As bad as he's been for the Senate, he has limits. January 6 was too much for him.
Sure, maybe for two hours on January 7th it was too much for him. He's been useless on the insurrection and on almost any other matter since Biden became president.
I used to have a grudging respect for McConnell as a supremely shrewd tactician, and would say to myself "Why can't there be a Democratic Mitch McConnell?" (And Harry Reid kinda was).
But he's really been a useless piece of shit over the last few years—basically a rubber stamp for MAGA. Just doesn't have any fight left in him, I guess.
Kevin's not wrong, of course, that the next GOP Senate leader (and almost certainly the next majority leader) will be worse.