Addison Mitchell McConnell has been known for his bare-knuckle politics since he first beat Sen. Walter Huddleston in 1984 for the Kentucky Senate seat the incumbent Democrat had held for three terms — a surprise win in a state which at the time rarely elected Republicans.
The race was won largely on a last-minute ad McConnell ran, which featured a pack of bloodhounds running around looking for his opponent who missed numerous votes because of his paid speech schedule.
In the time since, the native of Tuscumbia, Alabama, has never been reluctant to participate in America’s rough-and-tumble politics — a fact that confused many of his critics and observers last Wednesday when he gave two remarkable speeches on the Senate floor. One of them began as rioters were storming the Capitol, regarding attempts by some other Republicans to overturn the election.
“We are debating a step that has never been taken in American history,” McConnell began, his voice trembling with emotion. “Whether Congress should overrule voters and overturn a presidential election. I have served 36 years in the Senate. This will be the most important vote I have ever cast.”
“President Trump claims this election was stolen,” he went on. “The assertions range from specific local allegations to constitutional arguments to sweeping conspiracy theories. I supported the president’s right to use the legal system. Dozens of lawsuits received hearings in courtrooms across the country.”
“But over and over, the courts rejected these claims — including all-star judges whom the president himself nominated.”
McConnell went on to say he supports strong state-led voting reforms, but that “nothing before us proves illegality anywhere near the massive scale that would have tipped this entire election.”
McConnell stressed that the Constitution gives Congress a limited role. “We cannot simply declare ourselves a national Board of Elections on steroids.”
The majority leader who will soon become the minority leader after twin losses in the Georgia runoff races on Jan. 5 had been urging members of his conference for weeks not to challenge the results; he was addressing fellow senators as they gaveled in to debate the objection.
In his office in the U.S. Capitol three years ago, Kentucky’s longest-serving senator told me in an interview he was mindful of the history and the institutions that came before him; from his painting of fellow Kentuckian Henry Clay during his “Great Compromise” Senate speeches of 1850 to the spot in his front office where the Library of Congress once sat until it was torched by British troops during the invasion of Washington in 1814.
“They started bonfires using furniture to destroy the chamber,” he explained in the interview, “The books and the wood floors were destroyed.”
Wednesday marked the largest security breach by a mob since that fire burned where his office now stands. As he spoke, crowds of angry Trump supporters were pushing against barricades set up to protect the Capitol.
“If this election was overturned by allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” McConnell warned, predicting that every election would become a free-for-all power struggle in which the loser would try to overturn the will of the voters. “Self-government, my colleagues, requires a shared commitment to the truth. And a shared respect for the ground rules of our system. We cannot keep drifting apart into two separate tribes with a separate set of facts and separate realities,” he continued.
Every time in the last 30 years that Democrats have lost a presidential race, they’ve tried a challenge like this one — after 2000, 2004, and 2016. After 2004, a senator joined and forced this same debate. Democrats such as Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, and Hillary Clinton praised and applauded the stunt.
“Republicans condemned those baseless efforts,” McConnell said. “And we just spent four years condemning Democrats’ shameful attacks on the validity of President Trump’s own election. There can be no double standard. The media that is outraged today spent four years aiding and abetting Democrats’ attacks on institutions after they lost. But we must not imitate and escalate what we repudiate. Our duty is to govern for the public good.”
“It would be unfair and wrong to disenfranchise American voters and overrule the courts and the states on this thin basis,” he concluded. “And I will not pretend such a vote would be a harmless protest gesture while relying on others to do the right thing,” he said, his voice again trembling in the emotion of the moment.
“I will vote to respect the people’s decision and defend our system of government as we know it.”
In that moment, repudiating a president he had so loyally helped to govern, McConnell found his finest hour in one of our country’s darkest.
Hours after McConnell’s first speech, and after rioters had stormed the Capitol, McConnell once again took to the Senate chamber to say emphatically, “The United States Senate will not be intimidated. We will not be kept out of this chamber by thugs, mobs, or threats. We will not bow to lawlessness or intimidation. We are back at our posts. We will discharge our duty under the Constitution for our nation.”
“They tried to disrupt our democracy,” he said, “and they failed.”
In that moment, McConnell did not fail. The nation needed to hear precisely that, coming from him, a close ally to Trump who was unwilling to cross the clear, bright line from politics into conduct truly destructive of our constitutional republican system. His words that day will be committed to history.
