Republican Senator Mitch McConnell announced on Wednesday that he will step down as party leader in the US upper house next November. McConnell led the conservative minority in the Senate and is the politician who has held those reins for the longest time in history, more than a decade, which also coincides with the most turbulent period in the conservative formation, ushered in by the rise of Donald Trump. a declared enemy of McConnell on the Washington political stage.
McConnell, who turned 82 last week and whose seat is secured until 2027, made his decision public to his colleagues in the Senate, a scene he has known well since his arrival in 1985, with a speech in which the politician with his usual gesture Undaunted, he couldn't hide his feelings.
“One of the most underrated talents in this life is knowing when it is time to move on to the next chapter. That's why I stand before you today, Mr. President and dear colleagues, to tell you that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate,” McConnell said.
He justified the decision by saying he was “experiencing a particularly difficult moment in the family,” referring to the recent death of his sister-in-law, the younger sister of his wife, former Cabinet Secretary Elaine Chao, in a car accident in Texas. “We tragically lost Angela just a few weeks ago,” McConnell said. “When you lose a loved one, especially at a young age, the grieving process involves a certain amount of introspection,” he added.
The Kentucky senator then warned: “I still have enough gas in my tank to completely disappoint my critics, and I intend to do so with all the enthusiasm to which they have become accustomed.”
It is inevitable to link McConnell's announcement to Republican National Committee President Ronna McDaniel's decision to resign from office next week, three days after the vote on Super Tuesday, a day when primaries are organized in 15 states are in which everything indicates that Trump's nomination as a candidate for the elections next November will be confirmed. The Senate minority leader is one of the former president's favorite targets, whom he often vilifies with one of his favorite insults: RINO, an acronym for “lip service Republican.”
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without restrictions.
Subscribe to
McConnell is the living image of the most traditional faction of the Republican Party, which emerged from Ronald Reagan's conservative revolution in the 1980s and which found it difficult to stand up to the populist current of Trump and his ilk. The loudest dissent came during the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when thousands of Trump supporters endangered the lives of lawmakers, including McConnell, after the still-president refused, and still refuses, accepting defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 when he addressed them at the end of a rally in Washington.
Earlier, at the end of Trump's first term in the White House, McConnell made perhaps the most consequential policy decision of his career, one that will influence American public life for decades. It was when he hit the accelerator in the final moments of the 2020 campaign to confirm Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, despite promising in the past not to do such a thing. In this way, the Supreme Court, whose nine justices are elected for life, trended toward a super-conservative majority of six to three, unprecedented in this country in eight decades.
“Believe me, I know my party’s policies at this particular moment,” McConnell argued in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday. “I have a lot of faults, but that’s not one of them.”
Last year, the senator showed signs of weakness after a bad fall. He later starred in several unfortunate episodes in which he momentarily froze in front of the media in the middle of an argument. And in recent months he has also earned the dislike of his co-religionists for joining forces with Democrats, particularly their Senate leader Chuck Schumer, to push for an aid package for Ukraine to defend against Russian aggression in a war to move forward on the path that turned two years old last week and to reach an agreement on the border that will help resolve the current migration crisis. Trump does not want this issue to be resolved purely for electoral reasons and, in further evidence of his renewed control over the party, has managed to get members of Congress to torpedo this Senate initiative.
Follow all the information about the United States elections in our weekly newsletter.