Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell supports Donald Trump’s new direction for the country, but not for his party.
In an interview for his memoir The Long Game, McConnell told the Washington Examiner that Trump is a preferable option to the Democrats, but that the GOP must not change its identity.
“I would say to some of my conservative friends I share some of the reservations you do about Trump’s, some of Trump’s positions, and certainly his temperament, but look at the alternative,” McConnell said. “This is the choice that primary voters on both sides are giving us. And for me, it’s an easy decision to conclude that four more years just like the last eight is not good for our country.”
McConnell said he wants the Republican Party to function as a champion of the private sector in contrast to his perception of the Democrats serving as the party of taxation, regulation and litigation. He would not adopt Trump’s vision for the GOP as a “workers’ party,” but said he certainly hopes the GOP appeals to workers and attracts “Reagan Democrats” to vote Republican.
“I don’t think we need to reinvent what the Republican Party stands for. Reagan didn’t do that. And we, basically, are a right-of-center, America’s right-of-center party,” McConnell said. “I don’t believe Donald Trump will change the Republican Party. I think he is more likely to gravitate in the direction that we have staked out since the Reagan era.”
In The Long Game, McConnell wrote about the dilemma he faced in choosing whether to vote for Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater for president. McConnell favored Goldwater and brought him to campus as president of the University of Louisville’s College Republicans in 1962. But McConnell disapproved of Goldwater’s decision to oppose civil rights legislation and voted for President Johnson in 1964.
“I was very upset with Goldwater, who I admired and agreed with on virtually everything, for doing that. I thought it would turn the African-American vote solidly against us for decades and it did,” McConnell said. “However, upon reflection, given all the damage that Johnson did to the country, I regretted the vote because I should have taken a lot of other things into consideration.”
McConnell’s vote against Goldwater shares some similarities with #NeverTrump conservatives’ pledge not to hold their nose and vote for Trump. But McConnell doesn’t see it that way, and thinks his decision was “pretty different.”
“What we have today is a clear choice between two unpopular options,” McConnell said, contrasting the 2016 and 1964 elections. “Hillary Clinton, if she’s elected, will be another four more years just like the last eight … I think the country desperately needs to go in a different direction.”
The majority leader slammed any right-leaning independent bid for the presidency, and said no independent candidate could win in November. While right-leaning #NeverTrump voters publicly fret the GOP’s presumptive nominee gaining the authority of the presidency, McConnell is looking forward to a Republican president who acts as a strong executive.
Asked about whether Congress would make an effort to restrain unilateral action by the next president, McConnell said he was looking forward to all the things President Trump would undo by “executive activism.”
“I’d like to see him [Trump] walk into the office after being sworn in and start undoing as much of this regulatory rampage that’s been descending on the country over the last six years as you possibly can,” McConnell said.
“So that kind of executive activism I would look forward to and applaud. On the other hand, I think as soon as a President Trump was sworn in, his White House counsel would tell him what he can and can’t do, consistent with the Constitution.”
McConnell said that he thinks the Obama years have been good for the Republican Party, and points to the GOP’s electoral victories as evidence. But the majority leader insisted that only so much could be accomplished legislatively without controlling the White House.
“I think conservatives need to remember you need a president to sign a bill,” McConnell said. “In order to complete the change that the country would like to have, we have to have the White House.”
