WASHINGTON — He’s denounced one of his party’s most extreme new members of Congress. He’s voted to approve most of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees. And he’s expressed openness to a Republican compromise with the White House on a coronavirus relief package.
In the opening round of the 117th Congress, Sen. Mitch McConnell appears to be trying to take steps to reorient the Republican Party toward the political mainstream, even as Trumpism continues to be the prevailing strain among rank-and-file GOPers.
The question is whether his posture is just a temporary reaction to the political winds of the moment, a brief nod to the new Democratic Party power structure in Washington -- or a longer lens strategy that guides the party back to its pre-Trump roots and permits Republicans to practice the lost art of bipartisanship.
His first substantive test is unfolding this week as Senate Democrats look ready to fast-track the president’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan.
“Mitch can be very tough and effective. I think he’s probably the smartest tactical political senator there,” said former Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana.
But at the moment, even McConnell’s best intentions are largely at the whim of Democratic majorities that aren’t showing much eagerness to compromise.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has signaled he’s willing to use an expedited budget reconciliation process to approve the package on a party-line vote, even after a group of 10 Republicans went to the White House on Monday to submit an alternative that is about one-third of the price tag of Biden’s plan.
McConnell on Wednesday complained the “rushed budget process” would lead to a “poorly targeted borrowing spree,” and charged that it was Democrats who were reflexively abandoning Biden’s appeal for consensus.
“The new president talks a lot about unity but his White House staff and congressional leadership are working with a different playbook,” McConnell said.
To Democrats, the early signs are that the new McConnell is essentially the old McConnell -- a master at party discipline and partisan opposition.
“Nothing has changed. Just like he did at the start of the Obama administration he is going to try to grind the Senate to a halt and then run against radical-do-nothing Democrats in two years,” said Jim Manley, who was an aide to former Democratic Sen. Harry Reid. “What’s different here is that he is also watching right-wing extremists tear apart his party, and so he is desperately trying to figure out a way to put some space between Senate Republicans and the Trump-forever folks.”
On the big-picture items -- like funding to facilitate vaccine distribution and direct assistance to individuals and businesses -- there’s little disagreement between the two parties. It’s the size and scope of the package that is placing them at loggerheads.
McConnell indicated Wednesday that Republicans would offer a round of amendments to the package challenging stimulus checks for undocumented immigrants, a minimum-wage hike that could hamstring small business owners and funding for schools that some teachers’ unions are preventing from reopening.
He cited a Louisville, Kentucky, board of education member who said he would still be reluctant to open schools even if all personnel were vaccinated and noted that of the $68 billion previously set aside for K-12 schools, only $4 billion had been spent.
McConnell has not publicly backed a specific amount for the relief package, only saying the alternative $600 billion GOP proposal “could’ve gotten broad bipartisan support.” But he’s clearly positioning Republicans as the party of fiscal restraint -- even as a Yahoo News poll shows 74% of Americans favor $2,000 relief checks, something former President Donald Trump backed in the waning weeks of his term.
Earlier this week, McConnell issued rare statements on two Republicans serving in the U.S. House that illustrated his concern over the direction of the party.
He denounced Georgia freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as a “cancer for the Republican Party” as she continues to attract media attention for her embrace of QAnon-fueled conspiracy theories, including the myths that an airplane never hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11 and that some school shootings were staged.
House Democrats have scheduled a vote on Thursday to remove Greene from her committee assignments, forcing Republicans to choose whether they want to defend an increasingly polarizing figure gaining national stature.
McConnell also lent his support to Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who is facing fierce backlash for her vote to impeach Trump last month after the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill. McConnell called Cheney “an important leader in our party and in our nation ... with deep convictions and the courage to act on them.”
McConnell will face his own impeachment quandary with the Senate trial slated to begin next week. While he initially signaled his openness to convicting Trump, he later voted that the trial of a former president was likely unconstitutional.
For establishment Republicans, these were signs that McConnell is trying to head off political problems in 2022, a midterm election year that should be favorable to Republicans as the minority party.
But in 2010 and 2012, the GOP blew its chance to retake the U.S. Senate due to a slate of problematic candidates who emerged from brutal primaries.
“GOP bizarro-world candidates like Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock cost the GOP multiple Senate seats and distracted from messaging that would benefit the party. It helped, along obviously with Trump, define the party to independent voters as extreme and unhinged,” said Doug Heye, a Republican and former Capitol Hill aide. “What we’re seeing now from some House members threatens to do the same thing for 2022. Just as he has done since the election, McConnell knows there is a moral and political imperative to condemn the conspiracy theories within the GOP.”
McConnell’s shorter term political calculation is how Republicans will be perceived if they ultimately oppose a spending package primarily designed to pull the country out of the economic hardship from a nearly yearlong pandemic.
In the meantime, McConnell is attempting to present himself as the figure doing the most to exhibit some overture of bipartisanship — a familiar position for the party out of power, even if only by a single seat. But he faces an early political deficit against Biden, whose approval rating at 49%, is a full 28 points ahead of McConnell’s, according to a new Quinnipiac University national poll released Wednesday.
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