A new United States Congress convenes in Washington, DC, on January 3. But for the first time in 18 years, a key Republican leader will no longer be in charge: Sen. Mitch McConnell.
Since 2007, McConnell has served as the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate, guiding members of his caucus through four different presidencies and countless legislative obstacles.
Experts say his tenure as the Senate’s longest-serving party leader will ultimately be remembered as an inflection point for Republicans and Congress as a whole.
Under McConnell’s leadership, US politics moved away from the demagogues and consensus builders of previous eras. Instead, McConnell helped usher in a period of norm-breaking hyperpartisan politics that paved the way for figures like incoming President Donald Trump, leader of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.
“First and foremost, he expanded a trend in minority obstruction in the Senate,” Steven S Smith, professor emeritus of political science at Washington University in St Louis, told Al Jazeera.
Smith noted that McConnell led a Republican majority for only six of his 18 years as Senate leader. The rest of his term has been spent mobilizing a 100-seat Senate minority to thwart the rival Democratic Party’s agenda.
“Second, he will be known for deepening partisan polarization in the Senate,” Smith said. “While McConnell is not a MAGA conservative or extremist by today’s standards, he was a deeply partisan leader.”
Despite his commitment to the Republican Party, some see McConnell as a potential shield for figures like Trump, with whom he has clashed in the past.
Although he is stepping down as party leader, McConnell intends to remain in the Senate for the remainder of his six-year term. But the extent to which McConnell will act as a check on Trump’s ambitious second-term agenda remains to be seen.
“I would be very surprised to see him be provocative in a public way. His influence is going underground,” Al Cross, a veteran reporter and columnist who covered McConnell’s tenure, told Al Jazeera.
“I usually play the villain”
McConnell has led a long and storied career in the Senate. In 1984, he made his first bid for a House seat, unseating a Democrat incumbent.
Since then he has remained undefeated. In 2020, he won his seventh consecutive term.
His ascent to the top of the Senate came without significant opposition. The 2007 retirement of former Senate Republican leader Bill Frist left the position vacant.
But even from his earliest days as Senate leader, McConnell cultivated a reputation as a hard-liner and obstructionist.
During his first year as Republican leader, The New York Times described him as operating with “almost robotic efficiency” to attack Democratic policies despite leading a minority in the Senate.
“Mr. McConnell and his fellow Republicans are playing such strong defense, blocking nearly every bill proposed by the minority Democratic majority, that they are increasingly able to dictate what they want,” reporter David Herszenhorn wrote.
McConnell quickly embraced his visibility as a partisan warrior, a self-described “grim reaper” for progressive proposals.
One editorial column called him “Senator No” for his refusal to work across the aisle. McConnell himself once greeted reporters by saying, “Darth Vader has arrived.”
“During the three decades I’ve been a U.S. senator, I’ve been the subject of many profiles,” McConnell wrote in the opening lines of his 2016 memoir. “I usually play the villain.”
Smith, the University of Washington professor, described McConnell as causing a “transformation” in the Senate as a result of his hardline approach.
Before McConnell’s leadership, Smith said the Senate saw only “occasional minority obstruction.” But then, the chamber became known in political circles as the “Senate with 60 votes”.
This nickname is a reference to the 60 votes needed to overcome a minority filibuster, otherwise known as a filibuster.
Under McConnell, Smith explained, “action on legislation of any significance would face minority obstruction and require 60 votes to close.”
Bending rates
One of McConnell’s most divisive moments came in 2016, with the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Normally, when a justice dies, the sitting president has the right to appoint a replacement. But Scalia’s death came 11 months before a major presidential election. And the president at the time, Democrat Barack Obama, was nearing the end of his last term.
McConnell made a stunning — and quick — political play. Within hours of Scalia’s death, the Republican leader announced he would refuse to call a vote to confirm Obama’s chosen replacement.
“The American people should have a voice in choosing the next Supreme Court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” McConnell said in a statement.
Left-leaning publications such as The Nation condemned McConnell’s decision as an attack on the US Constitution. “This rejection broke the norm,” wrote journalist Alec MacGillis in the ProPublica publication.
But McConnell’s gambit changed the balance of power in the field for generations to come.
That November, American voters elected Trump — a political newcomer — to his first term in the White House, setting the stage for more changes in Washington’s norms.
Trump eventually appointed three right-wing justices to the Supreme Court, including one to replace Scalia. This cemented a conservative supermajority on the bench that was expected to shape American law for generations to come.
Trump later praised McConnell as his “ace in the hole” and his “partner.”
“Mitch understood, as I did, that because judges enjoy life tenure, the impact of judicial appointments can be felt for thirty years or more,” Trump wrote in a follow-up to McConnell’s memoir. “Transforming the Federal Judiciary is the Long Endgame!”
A Trump rivalry
But heading into a bold new Trump administration in 2025, McConnell has increasingly spoken out against the president-elect and his isolationist “America First” platform.
The two Republican leaders have repeatedly butted heads and their relationship is noticeably frosty.
Trump has openly called McConnell an “old Sorb” and insulted his “China-loving wife” Elaine Chao, a slap at her Asian heritage.
McConnell, meanwhile, has fired back with his own bellicose words, implying parallels between Trump and isolationism in the 1930s.
“We’re in a very, very dangerous world right now, reminiscent of pre-World War II,” McConnell told the Financial Times in December. “Even the slogan is the same. “America First”. That’s what they said in the 30s.
After vacating his leadership post in January, McConnell is expected to assume the role of chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.
In his new position, he is likely to advocate for strengthening the US military to counter threats from adversaries such as Russia, Iran and China.
Still, at 82, with health challenges including a recent decline, experts say McConnell is unlikely to offer much resistance to the incoming Trump administration.
“Since Senator McConnell is out of his leadership position and given his physical weakness, I don’t expect much in the way of sustained opposition from him,” Harvard University political scientist Daniel Ziblatt told Al Jazeera.
“It’s possible he could throw a dissenting vote here or there that could make a difference. But his record leaves me breathless.”
No greater institutionalist
Still, Herbert Weisberg, a political science professor at Ohio State University, predicts McConnell could act as an occasional dissenting voice, especially as the Senate weighs some of Trump’s controversial nominees for top government posts.
“He would normally want to defer to a Republican president for nominees, but he will be wary of Trump’s unusual nominees. He may be willing to vote against some, but not all,” Weisberg told Al Jazeera.
Already, McConnell — a childhood polio survivor — issued a public warning to future administration officials to “refrain from” attempts to “undermine public confidence” in “proven cures,” to don’t disrupt their Senate confirmation hearings.
The statement came shortly after Trump’s health nominee Robert F Kennedy Jr was linked to an effort to revoke polio vaccine approval in The New York Times.
But a single Republican is unlikely to block a nomination or piece of legislation, noted Steven Okun, an analyst on US politics, government and trade.
Republicans have a 53-member majority in the incoming Senate. And many in the party are firmly behind Trump’s leadership.
Assuming a united Democratic opposition, “four Republican senators would be needed to stop anything a future President Trump would introduce in the Senate,” Okun explained.
McConnell, Okun added, is unlikely to take on the role of adversary — “only when Donald Trump pursues more aggressive actions that will run counter to the US national interest.”
After all, party loyalty has been a key tenet of McConnell’s leadership. And experts like Cross, the journalist, believe McConnell will not want to miss an opportunity to use the Senate’s power to shape presidential policy.
“I can’t think of any greater institutionalist than Mitch McConnell,” Cross said. “He loves the Senate, that’s what he aspires to. He doesn’t want to give up his advice and consent role.”
