Before the ink had even dried on a long-awaited immigration and foreign aid bill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced the deal lacked support in the Republican conference, a proposal he had personally championed.
The moment illustrated the changed landscape on Capitol Hill, as the Kentucky Republican’s influence continues to wane with his fellow Republicans and the party shifts more to the right with former President Donald Trump’s influence. The front-runner for the GOP nomination staunchly opposed the deal and has long pushed for Senate Republicans to ditch McConnell.
It was an abrupt change from just three months earlier when Republicans demanded Democrats agree to a series of changes in border policy in exchange for additional foreign aid. In the days since McConnell had tapped Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) to negotiate the deal, Trump had commanding wins in the GOP primary race in Iowa and New Hampshire, consolidating his control over the party.
The failure of the border deal is giving new fuel for Republican critics who have been working to oust McConnell. The longest-serving Senate GOP leader continues to face a wave of Republican senators who are more loyal to Trump.
“We don’t have an effective leader, but that’s been my position for the last year and a half. The last few months have been abysmally embarrassing,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), coming out of a party meeting on Thursday.
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Earlier in the week, a group of McConnell’s foes, many of whom were the first to speak out against the proposal, took a victory lap after it appeared they had successfully tanked the legislation. They also took the opportunity to question McConnell’s leadership for allowing a deal to emerge that the majority of the conference rejected.
“This just blew up in leader McConnell’s face, and now he’s tried to blame President Trump,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), speaking with reporters on Wednesday. “This [deal] does more harm than good, and that’s not James Lankford’s fault, that’s leader McConnell’s fault.”
In 2022, McConnell easily beat Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) in the first challenge to his leadership in 15 years amid infighting over the party’s disappointing performance in the midterm elections. Scott received 10 votes out of 49 Republicans at that time.
But since then, a growing number of Senate Republicans continue to be vocal about their grievances with McConnell, including frustrations with his support for U.S. aid to Ukraine. The minority leader’s health has also been in the spotlight when he froze up during two different appearances last summer after becoming concussed from a fall in the spring, which raised questions about whether a changing of the guard was necessary.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) reflected on a closed-door session with McConnell back in 2022 when he and several other senators pressed McConnell following the leadership election to pursue more confrontation and more aggressive negotiating tactics in talks with Biden and the Democrats over the next two years.
“I turned to Mitch McConnell then and I said, ‘Look, we spent the last two years with a group, a handful of Republicans joining with Democrats to pass the Democrat agenda,’” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who voted against the Republican leader during internal elections back in 2022. “I turned to Mitch then, and I said, ‘Is there anything you’re willing to fight on? Is there anything you’re willing to draw a line in the sand and say we will fight?’”
“He refused to answer that question, and that’s why we’re in this mess,” Cruz added.
Some of McConnell’s foes are starting to compare the current situation to the ouster of former Rep. Kevin McCarthy from the speakership after he helped broker a deal with Democrats on the debt ceiling.
“I mean, it’s betrayal. How is what McConnell just did with this border deal any different than what McCarthy did?” questioned a Republican senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “He’s been in charge for far too long. It’s time to bring in new blood.”
Trump’s influence has created obstacles for the Republican leader, with the composition of the conference shifting away from longtime establishment members to those with views more sympathetic to the former president.
The conference no longer includes members like former Sens. Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Ben Sasse, Rob Portman, and Roy Blunt, senators who often had a higher allegiance to McConnell over Trump. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) will join them soon enough after announcing his retirement last year.
McConnell’s job doesn’t appear to be immediately in danger. Scott admitted there isn’t much the conference can do at this point until after the November 2024 election.
“There will be an election after the November election. As you know, I ran, I put out my plan of what we should do and how we ought to operate,” Scott said. “I hope we have a robust discussion about how we ought to operate.”
McConnell and his allies emphasize that he’s not going anywhere.
“They’ve had their shot,” he said in an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, referring to the critics in the conference.
While the Senate minority leader’s critics have become more outspoken, there is little evidence that those voices have grown beyond the members who voted against McConnell back in 2022.
“I think the isolated attacks from certain members of the pack on Sen. McConnell as leader are out of bounds,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), speaking with reporters on Thursday. “At the beginning of this Congress, those who did not support his continuance as leader had the opportunity to replace him. The caucus voted overwhelmingly to keep him, and I think these personal attacks need to stop.”
Doug Heye, the former communications director of the Republican National Committee, said he believes the calls to remove McConnell are overblown.
“It’s because some of the more bombastic members are out there. Ted Cruz criticizing Mitch McConnell isn’t news. But, your Twitter feed will be filled with people talking about it, and Twitter is not real life,” Heye said.
Heye believes even though McConnell’s typical allies like Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), a former member of leadership, and Thom Tillis (R-NC) came out against the bipartisan immigration proposal, that doesn’t mean anything about the strength of McConnell’s leadership.
“They all weighed in late, they weren’t out there opposing the bill early. They saw the politics on this. By the time I saw anything on Cornyn really, the bill was dead,” Heye said.
While the division within the party is palpable, some say there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that hasn’t necessarily come to light.
“For every person who’s trying to mess with McConnell, there’s a counterweight with someone else who’s really upset with those who are wasting time and making Senate Republicans look like House Republicans,” said a Republican strategist, who preferred to remain anonymous in an effort to reflect candidly on the situation.
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After a sweeping emergency aid bill for Ukraine and Israel inched ahead in the Senate on Thursday with the help of 17 Republicans, there’s a glimmer of hope for the measure after a series of setbacks. However, multiple Republicans have demanded votes on border amendments before final passage, underscoring how immigration continues to split Republicans even as leadership attempts to move past the failed deal.
“Big legislation — forget Donald Trump for a minute — big legislation is very hard to do, period. On immigration, it’s impossible to do,” Heye said. “This is an issue that Republicans have never been able to do anything on. I think Lankford worked out the best possible deal that Republicans could have hoped for, not sure what they will do now.”
