Republicans Can’t Afford To Elect Another Mitch McConnell As Senate Leader

  Rachel Bovard  visit on Twitter @rachelbovard

Last Tuesday, America sent a resounding message to Washington when they elected Donald Trump and gave Republicans majorities in the Senate and likely the House. D.C. Republicans now have one job: Don’t screw it up.

For Senate Republicans, this means closing the book on the Mitch McConnell era of governance marked by heavily centralized management and open hostility to the Trump agenda and the Republican base. On Nov. 13, they will elect a new leader for the first time in nearly 18 years and have a chance to usher in a new leadership that is accountable to the conference and the priorities of the evolving base of the Republican Party.

As he prepares to depart the post of leader, McConnell continues to make clear where he stands on the Trump agenda. According to a forthcoming biography, he wished for Democrats to defeat Trump (in his words, to “take care of that son of a b-tch for us”) and has said he intends to stay in the Senate to fight members of his own party as a restrained foreign policy takes root within the GOP.

Republicans in the Senate cannot be led by someone who is openly hostile to the agenda of their party’s president and, by extension, the base who elected him — and all of them — on that platform. The Senate is not a rubber stamp for the president, but it must be an open and willing partner in implementing the president’s policy agenda. This requires a GOP leader who not only can intelligently advocate for an America First platform but also empowers each GOP senator to do the same.

The Majority Leader Is Not a Shop Foreman

To that end, how the Republican conference operates must change dramatically. While the House has a hierarchical leadership structure where all the authority over the House floor is vested in the speaker, the Senate is structured so that each senator has nearly equal power to demand votes on both bills and amendments.

However, over the last two decades, the leadership of both parties has centralized power in themselves. To borrow a phrase from former Sen. Jeff Sessions, the modern majority leader now acts as a “shop foreman,” devising strategies and issuing orders to which all other senators are simply expected to acquiesce. Senators who go their own way are subject to McConnell’s threats and intimidation or left high and dry during campaign season.

This “ruling from on high” approach has not been successful. Last year’s disastrous attempt at an immigration bill is a case study. The so-called “bipartisan” immigration bill was negotiated with Democrats in secret by Sens. James Lankford and McConnell. Input was not sought from other Republicans, and when it was offered, was excluded.

The result was one of the worst policy and strategic outcomes in recent memory. A bill intended to secure the border not only would have allowed nearly 2 million more illegal crossings before enforcement kicked in but also would have codified the “catch and release” strategy of releasing illegal aliens into the country once apprehended, allowing the Biden administration to continue to exploit status loopholes and provide work permits to illegal aliens, among other troubling provisions.

Instead of walking away from the negotiating table when the outcome became clear, Lankford and McConnell doubled down, and the bill proceeded to the Senate floor with the imprimatur of Senate Republicans — even though a majority of the conference opposed it on policy grounds.

Even though nearly all Senate Republicans ended up voting against it, the damage was done. Republicans now appeared to be blocking a “border fix,” and Biden and Harris were able to use the talking point during the entire presidential campaign. Laughably, McConnell blamed the blunder on Donald Trump.