Republicans lost the House but held the Senate in the midterm election. That puts Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell in the catbird seat.
After a bumpy start, he gets along smoothly with President Trump. He doesn’t need the House to pursue his top priority, filling the federal courts with conservative judges. In the past two years, 84 have been confirmed to lower courts and 2 to the Supreme Court—an impressive record.
Democrats were slow to react as the White House, McConnell, and Chairman Chuck Grassley of the Senate Judiciary Committee built a political juggernaut for nominating and confirming judges, most in their 40s and early 50s.
Now Democrats are terrified as they watch the courts slip away. They ought to be. It takes only a simple majority to confirm a federal judge, and the election made that task easier. Republicans added two or three new senators. This allows for some slippage.
But they may not need any. “It’s a simple fact that there isn’t much Republican consensus on a legislative agenda,” David French writes in National Review. “There is enormous consensus and resolve around the federal judiciary.”
McConnell hasn’t even finished the parade of nominees for this year. More will be voted on in the lame duck session of Congress next month. Chances are, they’ll be approved. Republicans have a multitude of young conservative jurists, law professors, and lawyers with dazzling résumés to choose from.
They’re not letting up. They intend to “keep confirming as many as we possibly can for as long as we’re in a position to do it,” McConnell told reporters the day after the midterm. “Next Congress as well.”
That he works well with Trump puts McConnell at the top of a small class of senators, along with Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and—well, I can’t think of others. The president doesn’t make it easy to be in his good graces.
McConnell and Trump are an example of political opposites attracting. McConnell doesn’t reveal much, even to GOP associates. Trump broadcasts his every thought. McConnell is patient. Trump is impatient. McConnell is proud but not boastful. Trump all but waves an index finger to declare, “I’m number one.”
The key is McConnell’s pragmatism and political skill. It took a while, but Trump eventually learned he needs what McConnell has. McConnell allows little to get in the way of winning. Conservatives who insist on pushing right-wing issues with no chance of passage find little favor with him. His close advisers are team players, senators like Roy Blunt of Missouri.
One of the majority leader’s rules of thumb is that divided government offers unique opportunities for compromise on big issues that otherwise would go nowhere. Thus, it’s not surprising that he wants to get a grip on out-of-control spending on entitlements.
This puts him at odds with Trump. In the 2016 campaign, Trump made it clear he opposed cutting Social Security and Medicare. When a senior White House adviser recently pleaded with him to trim those programs, he wouldn’t back down. He said the no-cuts pledge was an unbreakable promise.
At his press conference, McConnell sounded like he isn’t ready to press the issue. It would be defensible were he to conclude entitlement reform is, for now, like one of those right-wing issues that can’t pass. But he doesn’t appear to think so. With House speaker Paul Ryan retiring, McConnell will be the only major figure in Washington who harps on entitlements and debt. It’s a lonely role.
McConnell’s theory about divided government is based on the notion of shared pain. Neither party wants to champion “reform” of Social Security on its own, especially after President George W. Bush tried and failed following reelection in 2004. Bush’s effort attracted practically no one in either party.
Here’s what McConnell said when Democrats took over Congress in 2007:
I think it can only happen with divided government. That is, one party in the White House and another party in Congress. Divided government is the only way you can kind of share the blame for doing big things. . . . We need to fix Social Security and the best time to do that is when you have divided government.
Should Republicans and Democrats agree to push together to take on entitlements, neither party would have a political advantage. A backlash by voters would hit both. Acting alone would be too risky.
Since Republicans gained seats, the midterm marked another McConnell victory over Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer. That wasn’t all. Schumer had led the Democratic effort to block the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. It not only failed but turned into a Democratic disaster.
The political impact of persecuting Kavanaugh was enormous. It aroused Republican voters to charge into the campaign. McConnell said it was like a shot of intensity. It led to yet another defeat for Schumer.
And it put McConnell in the catbird seat. By the way, that means he has the upper hand over his rivals.
