The Supreme Court slow-walked any judgement of Trump and allowed him to return to the White House again.
And McConnell?
Well, he gets to lull himself to sleep with the realization that he got religion much too late.
This column was originally published by TheStatehouseFile.com
By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
February 14, 2025
It would be fascinating to crawl inside the head of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, and explore the thoughts, fears and regrets that bounce around inside his skull.
The former longtime leader of the Republican Party in the Senate has emerged in recent days as a persistent opponent and critic of President Donald Trump.
Trump, of course, is also a Republican, albeit one who trashes time-tested GOP principles with the same heedless abandon with which he demolishes democratic institutions.
This apparently has begun to concern McConnell.
He voted against three of Trump’s Cabinet nominees—Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. His explanations of why he voted against the Cabinet picks have been dismissive when they haven’t been scathing.
He also penned and published an oped piece that takes issue with Trump’s practice of threatening to slap tariffs on any nation that displeases the president, however mildly.
In his column, McConnell advances an argument that once was a mainstay of conservative and Republican thought—free trade is good and trade barriers, such as tariffs, are bad.
Not long ago, almost all Republicans and not just McConnell thought that allowing countries to do business without government-imposed barriers promoted efficiency through competition, lowered prices for the same reason and, as a bonus, prevented wars. The thought was that nations that were making each other lots of money and providing quality goods and services to each other’s citizens weren’t likely to kill the golden goose by taking up arms against each other.
But Trump isn’t a conservative—or, if he is a conservative, he isn’t that kind of conservative.
McConnell-style conservatives believe free trade benefits all parties.
Trump sees all business as a zero-sum game.
For him, in all trades and transactions, there’s a winner and a loser. He likes being a winner, but he fears, loathes and abhors the idea of being a loser.
Thus, the views of these two men about the ways the world works and business is done are fundamentally at odds.
Given that, it’s surprising that they didn’t cross swords sooner than they did. Trump’s GOP and that of McConnell are two different animals, as different as a hippopotamus and an aardvark.
Why then did they work together for as long as they did?
Well, both men have a will to win at all costs and a willingness to subordinate any principle in pursuit of a cherished goal.
McConnell’s white whale involved entrenching conservative power in the parts of the federal government—the U.S. Supreme Court and the Senate—that are the most resistant and the least susceptible to public pressure. In pursuit of packing the high court, McConnell was happy to destroy any Senate practice, precedent or protocol that stood in his way.
Trump’s designs were less focused, largely because the president has the attention span of a hyperkinetic toddler hooked on crack, and they also were far more nakedly self-interested. Having a Supreme Court stacked to deliberate—both in the sense of judging and in the sense of delaying—Trump’s assaults on law would benefit the president at a personal and political level.
So, McConnell’s and Trump’s interests aligned for a time.
Trump’s usefulness to McConnell, though, diminished after the court had been successfully packed and largely ended when Trump lost the 2020 election.
At that point, the mutual detestation that had simmered between the two powerful Republicans boiled and then boiled over.
For a time, it appeared McConnell might have the upper hand in their joust.
When Trump was impeached for the second time, his ability to run for any federal office—including president—would have ended if 10 more Republican senators had voted to convict him. In 2020, 20 GOP senators, including McConnell, won six-year terms, giving them a good cushion before they’d have to face the voters again.
McConnell could have ended Trump’s political career by voting for Trump’s conviction and urging other newly returned Republican senators to do the same.
But McConnell wagered that the courts would take care of Trump for him.
He was wrong about that.
The Supreme Court slow-walked any judgement of Trump and allowed him to return to the White House again.
And McConnell?
Well, he gets to lull himself to sleep with the realization that he got religion much too late.
