Mitch McConnell Announces Retirement
Don't let the door . . .
AP (“Sen. Mitch McConnell won’t seek reelection in 2026, ending long tenure as Republican power broker“):
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell announced Thursday that he won’t seek reelection next year, ending a decadeslong tenure as a power broker who championed conservative causes but ultimately ceded ground to the fierce GOP populism of President Donald Trump.
McConnell, the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history, chose his 83rd birthday to share his decision not to run for another term in Kentucky and to retire when his current term ends. He informed The Associated Press of his decision before he addressed colleagues in a speech on the Senate floor.
“Seven times, my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate,” McConnell said, as aides lined the back chamber and senators listened from seats. “Every day in between I’ve been humbled by the trust they’ve placed in me to do their business right here. Representing our commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime. I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last.”
NYT (“McConnell Announces He Won’t Seek Re-election“):
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and longest-serving Senate leader who played a pivotal role in obstructing major Democratic agenda items and stacking the federal courts with conservatives, said on Thursday that he would not seek another term in 2026.
In a speech on the Senate floor that fell on his 83rd birthday, Mr. McConnell made official what had been widely expected since he announced last year that he would step down as the Republican leader. Representing Kentucky was “the honor of a lifetime,” he said, but “I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last.”
When he stepped down as leader, Mr. McConnell had said he was committed to finishing out his seventh term in Congress. He had not announced his political plans, but it had become clear that he was nearing the end of his career. Mr. McConnell has dealt with a series of health issues over the past year, including back-to-back falls recently that left him temporarily using a wheelchair to navigate the Capitol.
Mr. McConnell established himself as a master tactician in the Senate during 18 years as minority and majority leader, making shrewd use of the chamber’s rules to thwart his opponents and empower his allies, including President Trump. He blocked President Barack Obama from filling a Supreme Court seat toward the end of his tenure and then led a Republican effort to install deeply conservative jurists on the bench under the first Trump administration, culminating in the confirmation of three Supreme Court justices.
But he has a deeply fraught relationship with Mr. Trump, despite having played a key role in enacting the president’s agenda and allowing him to return to power. In recent weeks, he has found himself increasingly isolated within his own party, particularly on the issues of national security and safeguarding democracy.
In his speech on Thursday, Mr. McConnell warned that “a dangerous world threatens to outpace the work of rebuilding it.”
“I assure our colleagues that I will depart with great hope for the endurance of the Senate as an institution,” he said. “There are many reasons for pessimism, but the strength of the Senate is not one of them.”
These days, Mr. McConnell has found himself on an island in the Republican conference that he once led. In recent weeks, he has voted against three of Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees — Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary — cementing an unlikely role as the main G.O.P. holdout to the president’s agenda at the beginning of his second term.
Some of his colleagues had said they expected him to vote against the confirmation of Kash Patel as F.B.I. director as well on Thursday, but Mr. McConnell surprised them by voting “yes.” That saved Republicans the trouble of summoning Vice President JD Vance to break a tie after two other G.O.P. senators opposed Mr. Patel.
“The bureau’s reputation in recent years has been plagued by high-profile scandals that risk politicizing its critical work,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement afterward that did not address concerns other Republicans had raised about installing a Trump loyalist as the head of the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency. “Director Patel has committed to restoring Americans’ trust in the F.B.I., and I hope and expect he will move quickly to reset the bureau with greater transparency, accountability and cooperation with the Congress.”
Mr. McConnell did not mention Mr. Trump when he took to the Senate floor earlier in the day to announce his retirement plans, but he hinted that he intended to continue playing the more liberated role he has chosen for himself during his final months in Congress.
“The Senate is still equipped for work of great consequence,” he said. “And to the disappointment of my critics, I’m still here on the job.”
Some new Republican senators simply shrugged at the longtime party leader’s decision to retire and at the stance he has taken in opposition to Mr. Trump’s most scandal-tainted nominees, writing off Mr. McConnell as irrelevant.
“The Republican majority is unified in backing President Trump,” said Senator Jim Banks, a first-term Republican from Indiana. He said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and Mr. McConnell’s successor as majority leader, is “keeping us unified.”
“McConnell is the anomaly,” he continued. “It’s a nonfactor.”
Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, also played down the significance. “It’s not complicated: There’s no love lost between Mitch and President Trump, and no one is hiding that,” he said.
Some will say McConnell led poorly. Others will say he barely led at all.
Vaya con dios.
I hope that he vayas, but no con Dios
Mitch McConnel, a walking, talking ad for contraception.
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.
I would say McConnell led his caucus, and by extension the Republican Party, exceptionally well. It was what he led them TO that is poor. McConnell’s nihilism during the Obama years led us to Trumpism and after Trumpster Fire 1.o, Mitch had it within his power to rid us of The Donald and he chose not to.
I hope I outlive him, so I can go and piss on his grave.
In retrospect, before being lost in the dust of time, some surprising details about McConnell’s early life:
I hope he lives a long time, to take in the full effect of the damage he and his, have inflicted upon this society.
As what, an observer for the Klan?
But for McConnell, Merrick Garland would be Associate Justice Garland, Biden would have appointed someone other than Amy Barrett to the bench, Donald Trump would be grifting as a private citizen instead of embarrassing America on the world stage, and Elon Musk would be just another rich asshole. Only in Mitch’s febrile mind was another term in the Senate a possibility, so yesterday’s announcement was akin to a fart in the wind. His vote in favor of the despicable Kash Patel will be one of the many stains on McConnell’s reputation. History will not be kind.
I saw a video arguing the Baby Boomers needed to step aside in Congress. Amusingly, they used Mitch McConnell as a “Boomer”. Fully 11% of senators are of the Silent generation, i.e., 80+. One percent of the House is Silent generation. If you were 23 or older when Nixon was elected, you should retire out of the Congress.
Only 8% of the House is Millennials, even though the entirety of the now largest generation are age-eligible to be a Congressperson.
McConnell got sworn in as a senator just 5 months after J.D. Vance was born.
There’s no claim that McConnell was ever a Democrat. And in 1963, an observer for the Klan would have a 99% likelihood of being a Democrat.
@JKB: Yeah, as far as I can tell, to many “Boomer” means “old person I don’t like”. They can’t be bothered to actually learn the difference between Silents and Boomers. They have probably never heard of Gen X. Because who has?
(BTW, I count Obama as Gen X, not Boomer, though demographers differ on this point)
@JKB: Do I get a point for triggering/trolling JKB on an obvious drive by snark? Yes! I think I do. 😀
@Charley in Cleveland:
Yeah, this -Patel – was a freebie if he wanted to take it. Predictable, he like 99% of Republicans bend the knee for Trump. He seems apathetic regarding his reputation as he goes out the door.
Completely unprincipled at the very end. Trump brings that out in nearly everyone who deigns to serve him or placate him.
@al Ameda:
As I note above, I would caution against confusing malevolent intent with a lack of principles or a disinterest in personal legacy. McConnell’s “principle” has been to utilize every political tool available to hold Republican power in order to advance the GOP’s agenda without the inconveniences of policy negotiations, compromise, or winning over the general electorate to the virtues of conservatism (whatever they may be in his shriveled heart). Anti-majority rule über alles.
The egregious obstructionism during the Obama & Biden administrations, the stiff-arming of Merrick, the acceleration for Coney Barrett, the knee-bending for Trumpism, the seating of Patel at FBI to go after the opposition – all of these actions were consistent to his principle of GOP Power, so in his mind he is far from unprincipled.
Unfortunately, he will die proud of his reputation as a ruthless partisan who accomplished a lot of what he wanted through extra-governmental means. Mitch has NEVER valued being a statesman. He relished being a thug.
Agree entirely with Scott F. Watching some of McConnell’s recent 60 Minutes interview, it seemed he was clear eyed on so many things including Trump’s abject worthlessness, but his eyes lit up when confronted with what he had done because he had advanced brand Republican pretty much without concern with what that brand was put on.
@Scott F.: I kind of get relishing being a thug. If you look at the historic vignette about him up thread, he probably was the kind of kid who either spent a lot of time being a victim or living in fear of becoming one. Either way doesn’t end well a lot of the time.
@Scott F.:
Actually, I agree with your take, that McConnell’s primary principle was to exercise power in the service of Republican power. You certainly said it more artfully than I did.
What I didn’t say directly is that I consider Trump to be far different from anything we’ve seen, maybe than any historian has seen, perhaps since Andrew Jackson. I see Trump as an existential threat to all rules, regulations, laws and norms. I (naively) thought that McConnell might deviate from time-to-time from service to all-Trump-all-the-time.
I was wrong.