Donald Trump vs. Mitch McConnell: The last rearguard action of the old Republican Guard

Conservative US opposition
McConnell vs. Donald Trump: the last rearguard action of the old Republican Guard

by Niels Kruse
2/9/2022, 4:02 p.m

At 79, Mitch McConnell is far from the oldest member of the US Senate, but he is certainly one of the most powerful, perhaps even one of the most powerful political figures in all of Washington. He owes his influence to being the Republican faction leader in the small but important House. Since Democrats and Conservatives have had almost the same number of seats in the Senate for many years, the members ultimately decide the weal and woe of each law and thus also the weal and woe of the respective US President. And hardly anyone knows how to pull the strings better than McConnell.

McConnell, his Senate and the fundamental opposition

At the time of Barack Obama, he had turned the Senate into a fundamentally oppositional obstruction chamber – also with the help of the “filibuster” rule, which allows the minority faction to stop unpopular laws. When his successor, Donald Trump, moved into the White House, McConnell didn’t do much to counter his activities. He also had Trump’s back during both of Trump’s impeachment trials, though the two never got along well. But the senator from Kentucky is not only considered a tough power man but also, to put it mildly, extremely adaptable.

The relationship of convenience between the minority leader and the ex-president has long since expired, but even without McConnell’s backing, Trump has managed to become the linchpin of Republicans. To the kingmaker, who presumably wants to put himself back on the throne. But the old, ultra-conservative guard does not want to give up their party without a fight. After the decision was made in a resolution that the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 by Trump supporters was part of a “legitimate political discourse”, the senator contradicted: It was actually one acted as a “violent uprising” with the aim of preventing the peaceful transfer of power, the 79-year-old told Congress. The result of the presidential election was “legally certified”.

Ex-Vice President Mike Pence had only recently criticized Donald Trump for this reason. Contrary to what he would claim, he had no way of overturning the result of the presidential election. “President Trump is wrong,” Pence recently told the conservative Federalist Society. He did his constitutional “duty” and certified the outcome of the election. The storm for the seat of parliament was also sparked by Trump’s ardent appeal to his supporters to protest the vice president’s certification. On that January 6th, the mob had openly demanded Mike Pence’s head.

To this day, Trump has not acknowledged his electoral defeat against Democrat Joe Biden and regularly spread allegations of voter fraud, for which there is no evidence. After the election, he asked his vice president to block the formal confirmation of Biden’s victory in Congress. However, Pence, who had been loyal to Trump until then, had refused. “Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election,” Pence said recently.

Republican leadership exposes individual members

His fellow party member Mitch McConnell dislikes another Republican decision. The National Committee of the Conservative Party (RNC), for example, had reprimanded its own representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for being the only Republicans on the parliamentary investigative committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. Their behavior was “destructive to the US House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic”. The parliamentary group leader in the Senate also criticized this: It is not up to the party leadership to expose individual members because they may have different views than the majority.

McConnell and Pence’s recent comments reveal that Republicans are not quite in the hands of ex-President Donald Trump just yet. The ex-president is particularly popular with the party base, not least because of this support he is openly flirting with another presidential candidacy in 2024. But his former deputy Mike Pence also seems to position himself as a potential candidate. But the polls are clear so far: While the majority of the US population does not trust Donald Trump, he is clearly ahead in the internal race among the Republicans. In part double digits ahead of his only serious adversary, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.

Sources: DPA, AFP, Fivethirtyeight, MSNBC, Newsweek“New York Post“