WASHINGTON — In the days following former President Donald Trump’s caustic call for the removal of Mitch McConnell as leader of the Senate Republicans, few in the party ranks have followed suit.
The collective shrug to Trump’s outburst — among lawmakers and conservative groups — speaks to McConnell’s endurance as the GOP’s top tactician as much as it explains the prevailing doubts that the former president has any real plan to orchestrate such a coup.
“He’d have to identify an alternative, he’d have to have people whipping votes for that alternative. I don’t see Trump pulling all these pieces together,” said Lanhee Chen, who served as policy director for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. “I don’t think he cares enough about it. Yeah, he’s mad about McConnell. I just don’t see him focusing on this.”
In short, Trump’s strike against the Kentuckian already looks more like a single-day release of pent up steam than a concerted effort to upend Republican leadership.
After resting on constitutional grounds in voting to acquit Trump of inciting a riot on the U.S. Capitol, McConnell took to the Senate floor last Saturday to pin moral responsibility on the 45th president for the rampage.
To be sure, Trump’s choice to ridicule McConnell’s judgment, temperament and appearance poured colorful new gas on the GOP’s intraparty bonfire, but it did not move most of McConnell’s colleagues, the ultimate arbiters of his power.
None of McConnell’s lieutenants in Senate GOP leadership have shown any daylight between themselves and the man who has led their caucus for 14 years.
Even Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the most vocal Senate GOP critic of McConnell’s posture, would not go as far to say he should be replaced. In a radio interview, Johnson said McConnell’s “scathing speech” on Trump did not reflect “the majority of our conference.” But when asked whether he believed McConnell’s rebuke necessitated a change in leadership, a Johnson spokesman wouldn’t go further, saying he’d let the comments stand for themselves.
Leading conservative activists who readily jump to Trump’s defense have been largely silent on his assessment of McConnell, with several declining the opportunity to pick a side when reached by McClatchy, or requesting the cloak of anonymity to weigh in at all. Though Trump was the star, there’s a recognition among Republicans that many of the president’s key accomplishments — from tax cuts to the confirmation of judges — would not have been possible with McConnell’s maneuvering.
If this was a decision for Republican voters, it’d be no contest: Trump is far more popular than McConnell among the grassroots base. Fifty-nine percent of Republicans say Trump should continue to play a major role in the party, according to a Morning Consult survey released this week. But inside the marbled halls of Congress — where institutionalists reign and seniority rules — McConnell holds the upper hand.
“Mr. McConnell won’t be removed and replaced with a Trump toady. The former president’s screed will leave him appearing weaker while the Kentucky senator shows that Friedrich Nietzsche (and Kelly Clarkson ) was right: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” wrote longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Rove also pinned the twin Senate losses in Georgia’s runoff elections on Trump — not McConnell — and indicated that more members of Congress are privately confessing Trump lacked coattails in the 2020 election, even as the GOP made gains in the U.S. House.
What’s most worrisome to Republicans looking to regain congressional majorities in 2022 is whether Trump will play a constructive or meddlesome role.
McConnell has long wielded a forceful hand in selecting Senate candidates he believes are the most electable. But never before has he confronted a former president with the overwhelming potential to elevate or crush a contender based on their fealty to Trumpism.
In Ohio, where the race to replace retiring Sen. Rob Portman is already underway, the first two GOP candidates — former state treasurer Josh Mandel and former state party chair Jane Timken — are branding themselves as fierce Trump allies above all else. Left out of their opening pitches are any mention of McConnell.
McConnell hasn’t responded to Trump’s Tuesday attack and the operating thinking among some GOP operatives is that the tensions between the two will cool and fade over time, as the focus turns to President Joe Biden’s spending proposals.
One of McConnell’s favorite strategies during Trump’s tenure was to ignore his most outrageous and incendiary claims. That may work in the short term, but it will only prove successful over the next two years if Trump sees Democrats as his primary foil.
“President Trump is right to highlight that he won 74 million votes — the most votes in Republican Party history — but it was also still less than the Democrats won,” said Alyssa Farah, Trump’s former White House communications director. “Electoral victory means bringing more Republicans into the fold and recruiting new voters, which we do by contrasting our positions to Democrats, not fighting internally.”
McConnell’s team would rather talk about almost any other topic than Trump. Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff turned premiere political adviser to McConnell distributed advice on his podcast Thursday for how allies could deescalate the feud, without choosing a side.
“If you find yourself being pulled in as a conservative into a binary choice — between Donald Trump and something else,” Holmes urged, “reject the premise. Reject the premise.”
