WASHINGTON — Mitch McConnell has been here before.
It was a full decade ago that he had been stung by a string of 2012 Senate losses that left him short of the majority he would eventually claim in 2014.
Now with the lessons of 2022’s midterm Senate defeats hanging over his party and his own legislative influence curtailed due to the dawn of a capricious Republican-led House, analysts see the Kentuckian with a stubborn focus on the long path back to power in 2024.
“It’s 2014 all over again,” said Bruce Mehlman, a Washington based consultant who worked as an assistant secretary of commerce in President George W. Bush’s administration. “The main failure in 2022 – like 2010 and 2012 – was allowing the wrong candidates to win primaries. In 2014, McConnell made sure the better candidates won and he captured the majority.”
Mehlman recently released a 35-page slidedeck outlining the most significant issues driving politics and policy in 2023.
Ranking McConnell as the No. 4 key leader to watch, Mehlman described the Kentuckian’s goal as keeping his “Eyes on the Prize – a majority in ‘25.”
Mehlman’s four prescriptions for McConnell are to defeat weak candidates in primaries, block “objectionable” Democratic actions, cut deals on key issues and navigate the rising populist flank of the GOP.
In his dry, non-performative manner, McConnell has already sought to adhere to these directives, intentionally or not.
The Senate Leadership Fund, the McConnell-aligned super PAC, which spent $291 million during the 2022 cycle, put out polling showing its preferred candidate to take on Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia.
“Governor [Jim] Justice is the only potential Republican nominee who leads Senator Manchin on a general election ballot test,” noted SLF spokesperson Torunn Sinclair.
McConnell strongly inferred in December that former President Donald Trump’s imprint made it difficult for other party leaders to steer voters toward better candidates. With Trump himself running again for the White House in 2024, it’s unclear how much time he’ll devote to endorsing Senate candidates in primaries.
But the release of the favorable survey for Justice underlines that McConnell and his allies are prepared to be more aggressive in lifting their own favorites.
With the Senate off to a slow start legislatively, McConnell hasn’t had much of an opportunity yet to block Democratic initiatives.
But Senate Republicans announced this week they would seek to force a vote to block a new criminal code established by Washington, D.C.’s city council that they contend irresponsibly reduces penalties for crimes. Last week, a bipartisan majority in the House – including 31 Democrats – passed a resolution disapproving D.C. revised criminal code.
The debate will allow Republicans to place vulnerable Democrats on the defensive over a sensitive issue that is being felt across the country.
During the first two years of Joe Biden’s presidency, McConnell found places to support Biden’s agenda, most notably when he cast his vote in favor of the infrastructure bill. In January he even appeared alongside the president in Kentucky to promote funding to improve the Brent Spence Bridge.
There will likely be fewer opportunities for such crossover, but one must-pass legislative action that will require bipartisan cooperation is lifting the debt ceiling. McConnell has already stated that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy would need to take the lead on securing a deal acceptable to his conservative caucus that the president will ultimately sign.
“It’s smart of him because he doesn’t want to be caught in the middle. McCarthy has to figure a way out of this thing. They’ll pass it in the Senate no matter what,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist who used to work on Capitol Hill. “It’s the House that has to prove they can pass it. Everyone knows the Senate will pass it. [McConnell’s] more like, ‘We’ll see what Kevin can do.’”
The debt ceiling is the issue that is likely to animate the most hardline Senate conservatives, who McConnell has already wrestled with.
Sen. Rand Paul has already said that Biden would need to come to the negotiating table and agree to some level of spending cuts in order to earn GOP votes. But even if McConnell would support such cuts, he’s been adamant about not allowing the country to default.
That’s the last result he’d want to saddle Republicans with later this year as they turn the corner into the presidential election year of 2024.
Mehlman believes McConnell will stick to the same legislative strategy he embarked on at the beginning of Biden’s term. It’s the political blueprint that needs to change.
“Since the failure to capture the majority in 2022 resulted from running the wrong, too Trumpy candidates for the purple states in which they competed – rather than anything that happened in the 117th Congress – there is less need for a different legislative strategy than for a more aggressive engagement in the primary contests,” Mehlman said.
