The most effective politician in America retires
Erick Erickson writes:
Unlike a lot of conservatives gleefully cheering on Mitch McConnell’s announcement that he will step down as Senate Republican Leader in November, after the election, I actually paid a price for vocally opposing McConnell. In 2014, I used my platform at RedState to back Matt Bevin’s race against McConnell. I was one year into my contract at Fox News. Roger Ailes told me to stop bashing McConnell or stop going on Fox. I was sidelined at Fox for the next two years. And McConnell beat Bevin.
I learned Mitch McConnell does not care. He does not care because he was busy putting points on the board.
As conservative agitators, rarely were I and my side in the win column against McConnell. Much of the rage directed at McConnell since noon yesterday and before has a lot to do with that — McConnell kept winning, and he didn’t care.
McConnell did not care about my complaints or your complaints. He did not care about those who vilified him or his own popularity. He did not care that Republicans would attack him on the campaign trail and denounce him on TV. He did not care that Democrats made McConnell the most disliked national politician in America. Real Clear Politics’ political average for McConnell has him with a 21% national approval rating — lower than any other national political figure, including Kamala Harris.
But Mitch McConnell does not care. He is elected by the people of Kentucky who have been returning him to the Senate more than any other senator in the commonwealth’s 232 year history. He cares about Kentucky, not national opinion polls.
Mitch McConnell does not care that Republicans or Democrats dislike him.
McConnell not caring about those things made him dangerously successful at his job. He had to care about a majority of the Republicans in the United States Senate, not you or me.
As an appropriator, he knew how to cobble together deals and build coalitions. He took that skill to the Republican Leader’s office. He often sacrificed things we conservatives wanted to instead make life comfortable for Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, or any number of other liberal to moderate Republicans who sometimes then made deals that conservatives hated.
They kept McConnell in charge and, in turn, McConnell kept the GOP mostly in the majority and, through that, blocked Democrat judges and rapidly confirmed Republican judges.
Mitch McConnell did not care about your or my temper tantrums and demands because he has long understood that a Republican majority, for better or worse, had the power to block the administrative state and build a judiciary that has no term limits or elections for its members. He has cared very deeply about that.
Whether you or I care for McConnell does not matter. You can say any Republican would have done what McConnell did, but you would have to ignore a series of Republican Senate Leaders before McConnell who did not ram through judges at breakneck pace and wage jihad against bureaucratic appointees. McConnell was willing to cut the throats Trent Lott and Bill Frist would never dream of cutting. The populist bros like to mock the Marquess of Queensberry Rules they think everybody is playing by. McConnell pants’d the Marquess and gave him a swirly before the populist bros were out of diapers.
McConnell was fixated on keeping the GOP in the majority in the Senate, and using the power that gave them to deliver. People’s views on McConnell will be shaped by whether or not you agree with his policies, but almost no one denies he was incredibly effective – some say the most effective post WWII Senator in the US.
With the GOP likely to regain the Senate this year, it will be very interesting to see who replaces him.
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