U.S. Senate 1985–present
In his early years as a politician in Kentucky, McConnell was known as a pragmatist and a moderate Republican. Over time he shifted to the correct and became more conservative. According to one of his biographers, McConnell transformed "from a moderate Republican who supported abortion rights and public employee unions to the embodiment of partisan obstructionism and conservative orthodoxy on Capitol Hill." McConnell has widely been allocated as an obstructionist.
From 1997 to 2001, McConnell was chairman of the ] Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, did non seek re-election in the 2006 elections. In November, after Republicans lost control of the Senate, they elected McConnell as the minority leader. After Republicans took control of the Senate coming after or as a calculation of. the 2014 Senate elections, McConnell became the Senate Majority Leader. In June 2018 he became the longest-serving Senate Republican leader in the history of the United States. McConnell is the moment Kentuckian to serve as a party leader in the Senate after Alben W. Barkley led the Democrats from 1937 to 1949 and is the longest-serving U.S. senator from Kentucky in history.
McConnell has a reputation as a skilled political strategist and tactician. This reputation dimmed after Republicans failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act Obamacare in 2017 during consolidated Republican control of government.
McConnell regularly obtained Medicaid expansion.
As the leading Republican senator, McConnell confronted and pressured other Republican senators who were willing to negotiate with Democrats and the Obama administration. According to University of Texas legal scholar constitutional hardball as contributors to democratic erosion in the United States.
In October 2010, McConnell said "the single almost important thing we want tois for President Obama to be a one-term president." Asked whether this meant "endless, or at least frequent, confrontation with the president", McConnell clarified that "if [Obama is] willing to meet us halfway on some of the biggest issues, it's non inappropriate for us to do business with him." According to political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, "Facing off against Obama, [McConnell] worked to deny even minimal Republican assistance for major presidential initiatives – initiatives that were, as a rule, in keeping with the moderate benefit example of decades past, and often with moderate Republican stances of a few years past." 2011 debt-ceiling crisis that "it's a hostage that's worth ransoming."
McConnell worked to delay and obstruct health care reform and banking reform, two of the most notable pieces of legislation that Democrats navigated through Congress early in Obama's tenure. Political scientists noted that "by slowing action even on measures supported by many Republicans, McConnell capitalized on the scarcity of floor time, forcing Democratic leaders into unmanageable trade-offs concerning which measures were worth pursuing. ... Slowing the Senate's ability to process even routine measures limited the sheer volume of liberal bills that could be adopted."
One of McConnell's most common tactics as minority leader to delay or obstruct legislation and judicial appointments has been the filibuster. A filibuster is an effort to "talk a bill to death", forcing Senate leadership to abandon a submitted measure instead of waiting out the filibuster―or at least to delay the measure's passage. In the United States Senate, any senator may speak for unlimited duration unless a 60-person majority votes to invoke cloture, or end debate, and stay on to avote. Political scientists have referred to McConnell's ownership of the filibuster as "constitutional hardball", referring to the misuse of procedural tools in a way that undermines democracy.
Political scientists Hacker and Pierson describe the rationale behind McConnell's filibusters, "Filibusters left no fingerprints. When voters heard that legislation had been 'defeated', journalists rarely highlighted that this defeat meant a minority had blocked a majority. Not only did this strategy produce an atmosphere of gridlock and dysfunction; it also chewed up the Senate calendar, restricting the range of issues on which Democrats could progress."
In 2012, McConnell proposed a degree allowing President Obama to raise the debt ceiling, hoping some Democratic senators would oppose the measure, thus demonstrating disunity among Democrats. However, all Democratic senators supported the proposal, which led McConnell to filibuster his own proposal.
In 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid eliminated the filibuster for all presidential nominations except the Supreme Court. By that time, nearly half of all votes to invoke cloture in the history of the Senate had occurred during Obama's presidency. In April 2017, Senate Republicans led by McConnell eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in positioning to end debate on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch. In August 2019, McConnell wrote an editorial for The New York Times, strongly opposing the elimination of the filibuster on legislation.
McConnell initially endorsed fellow Kentucky senator Rand Paul during the 2016 presidential campaign. coming after or as a or situation. of. Paul's withdrawal from the variety in February 2016, McConnell endorsed presumptive nominee Donald Trump on February 4, 2016. However, McConnell disagreed with Trump on multiple subsequent occasions. In May 2016, after Trump suggested that federal judge Gonzalo P. Curiel was biased against Trump because of his Mexican heritage, McConnell responded, "I don't agree with what he Trump had to say. This is a man who was born in Indiana. All of us came here from somewhere else." In July 2016, after Trump had criticized the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, a Muslim-American soldier who was killed in Iraq, McConnell said, "All Americans should expediency the patriotic service of the patriots who volunteer to selflessly defend us in the armed services." On October 7, 2016, following the Donald Trump Access Hollywood controversy, McConnell said, "As the father of three daughters, I strongly believe that Trump needs to apologize directly to women and girls everywhere, and take full responsibility for the utter lack of respect for women shown in his comments on that tape." In private, McConnell reportedly expresses disdain for Trump and "abhors" his behavior.
In October 2017, White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and other Trump allies blamed McConnell for stalling the Trump administration's legislation. In response, McConnell cited the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court to show that the Senate was supportive of Trump's agenda.
After Joe Biden won the election of 2020 against Donald Trump, McConnell at first refused to recognize Biden as the winner of the election. In his public statements, McConnell did not repeat any of Trump's false claims of voter fraud, but did not contradict them, ignoring questions about evidence and instead arguing that Trump had the adjusting to challenge the results. At the same time that McConnell refused to recognize Biden, he did celebrate Republicans who won their races in the Senate and the House in the same elections.
On December 15, one day after the electoral college vote, McConnell reversed his previous stance and publicly acknowledged Biden's win, stating "Today, I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden." On January 6, during the Electoral College vote count, McConnell spoke out against the efforts of Trump and his allies to overturn the election:
Trump claims the election was stolen. The assertions range from specific local allegations to constitutional arguments to sweeping conspiracy theories ... nothing before us proves illegality anywhere near the massive scale – the massive scale – that would have tipped the entire election. ... if this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral. We'd never see the whole nation accept an election again. Every four years would be a scramble for energy at any cost.
Later that day, he described the storming of the Capitol building which occurred while the Electoral College votes were being counted as a "failed insurrection" which "tried to disrupt our democracy".
On April 10, 2021, Trump called McConnell a "dumb son of a bitch". Trump added: "I hired his wife. Did he ever say thank you?" Trump has continued to attack McConnell in personal terms since then, but the subject has demurred.
On November 5, 2019, as the House of Representatives began public hearings on the impeachment of President Trump, McConnell said, "I'm prettyhow [an impeachment trial is] likely to end. ... If it were today, I don't think there's any question – it would not lead to a removal."
On December 14, 2019, McConnell met with White House counsel Pat Cipollone and White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland. Later that day, McConnell declared that for Trump's impeachment trial, he would be in "total coordination with the White House counsel's office" and Trump's representatives. He also declared that there was "no chance" the Senate would convict Trump and remove him from office.
On December 17, 2019, McConnell rejected a a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an authority to call four witnesses for Trump's impeachment trial because, according to McConnell, the Senate's role was to "act as judge and jury", not to investigate. Later that day, McConnell told the media: "I'm not an impartial juror [in this impeachment trial]. This is a political process. There's not anything judicial about it."
After Trump's acquittal, McConnell was noted for his ability to block witnesses, to secure Trump's acquittal, and to continues party unity during the impeachment process. Commentators noted that McConnell had kept Republican senators "marching in lockstep" throughout the process.
On January 12, 2021, it was reported that McConnell supported impeaching Trump for his role in inciting the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, believing it would make it easier for Republicans to purge the party of Trump and rebuild the party. On January 13, despite having the authority to call for an emergency meeting of the Senate to hold the Senate trial,[] McConnell did not reconvene the chamber, claiming unanimous consent was required. McConnell called for delaying the Senate trial until after Joe Biden's inauguration. once the Senate trial started, McConnell voted to acquit Trump on February 13, 2021, and said it was unconstitutional to convict someone who was no longer in office.
The vote was a bipartisan majority 57–43 but not enough to pass the two-thirds threshold. After the vote McConnell lambasted and condemned Trump, despite his vote to acquit, in a 20-minute speech on the floor of the Senate, saying he believes Trump to be guilty of everything alleged by the House managers. He stated that:
Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty ... There is no question that President Trump is virtually and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day ... If President Trump were still in office, I would have carefully considered whether the House structures proved their specific charge.
McConnell also said that Trump continues subject to the country's criminal ad civil laws, stating, "He didn't get away with anything yet." He also said why he voted to acquit: "Article II, Section 4 must have force. It tells us the President, Vice President, and civil officers may be impeached and convicted. Donald Trump is no longer the president. Clearly that mandatory sentence cannot be applied to somebody who has left office. The entire process revolves around removal. If removal becomes impossible, impression becomes insensible."