Republicans are better off than they look. The midterm election is six months away, and their chances of preserving a good-sized chunk of their power in Washington are good.
Forget the House. History, an unprecedented number of GOP retirees, and a president who is not terribly popular—all this means Democrats should easily capture the 23 seats needed to take control of the House, the downscale chamber.
The snooty Senate is another story. It’s the key to Republican strength in the next two years of President Trump’s term. Keeping control won’t allow Republicans to boss Washington around and enact the sort of legislation that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says made “the last year and a half the best . . . for conservatives since I’ve been here.” McConnell was elected in 1984.
“The stuff we did last year was clearly a Republican agenda,” McConnell told me. “You know, judges, taxes, and regulations—that’s what we live to do, and virtually all of those are forever done on a party-line basis.”
McConnell says Republicans won’t “have that kind of year this year—not with a 50-49 Senate.” (Sen. John McCain, the 51st Republican, is at home in Arizona, suffering from brain cancer.) But the majority leader expects to confirm more federal appeals court judges before the midterm elections on November 6.
Last week, the Senate confirmed Trump’s 15th appellate nominee, Kyle Duncan of Louisiana, who’s 46 and seen as a future Supreme Court pick. And McConnell filed cloture to bring six more appeals court nominees to the Senate floor. The 11 regional appeals courts are one rung below the Supreme Court.
“I’m not planning on leaving any behind at the end of the year,” he says. “And if we’re fortunate enough to hold the Senate for two more years, we can have an even more consequential impact.”
That is why preserving Republican control of the Senate is more important than keeping the House. “If we hold the Senate,” McConnell insists, “we can continue to confirm nominations to lifetime appointments for a full four years and finish the job of transforming the American judiciary, which is my number-one goal.”
The idea is not transformation for its own sake. McConnell and his wise ally, Chairman Chuck Grassley of the Senate Judiciary Committee, want to flip the appeals courts from tilting liberal to leaning conservative, perhaps heavily. In this ambitious effort, it takes two—a leader and a chairman—to tango.
McConnell believes confirming conservatives to the federal bench outranks tax cuts in impact. “A tax bill can and will be revisited just as soon as the political winds shift. . . . But there’s not much any future administration can do to revisit a 48-year-old strict constructionist put on the circuit court for a lifetime.”
If a president could choose between his party holding the House or Senate, the pick would be easy. “It’s because of the personnel issue” that the Senate matters more, McConnell says. “Because the president, whoever that person is, can still get his people in, not only the executive branch but also the courts.”
That gives the Senate an extra responsibility. “Legislatively, you’re probably finished either way.” Whether you lose the House or the Senate, “You can’t do anything exactly the way you want it” any longer. “But you could still have a huge impact on the country through the appointment process if you held the Senate.” Which means you’d have more power.
And what if a Democratic House makes impeaching President Trump its first order of business in 2019? A vote of two-thirds of the Senate would be required to convict. That’s a very high hill to climb. In Bill Clinton’s case, not even a majority voted to convict. Unless the case for impeaching Trump were considerably stronger than it is now, the Senate would be unlikely to convict.
Broadly protecting the president is a job that would drop in the Senate’s lap. There are lots of ways it would work. The majority leader decides what is taken up on the Senate floor and what isn’t. McConnell believes this is one of his greatest and most useful powers.
Refuse to schedule an impeachment trial? Would McConnell dare? That would depend on the circumstances. He was strong enough to keep President Obama’s final nominee of a Supreme Court justice off the floor for most of 2016, as the clock ran out on Barack Obama’s second term. That was his decision alone. Meanwhile, his partner Grassley declined to schedule Judiciary Committee hearings.
The majority leader has other powers at his disposal. “We could prevent bills from landing on his desk . . . things he wouldn’t want to sign,” McConnell says.
The point in all this is Trump wouldn’t be helpless, assuming he hasn’t totally alienated Senate Republicans. He’d have an imperial guard. His world wouldn’t come to an end, nor would it for Republicans. That would occur only if Republicans lose both the House and the Senate this November, and lose badly.
That can’t be ruled out, but the good news for Senate Republicans is they have a mere 10 seats to defend. Democrats have 26, more than two football teams’ worth. At the moment, the only Republican seats regarded as vulnerable are those in Arizona, Nevada, and Tennessee.
As the saying goes, overnight can be a lifetime in politics. Who could have predicted a month ago Kanye West’s embrace of Trump? Will it help Republicans? Who knows, though you’d rather have him on your side than an incoherent Robert De Niro.
McConnell says Trump deserves credit for turning the judge business over to Don McGahn, his White House counsel. “The president now fully understands how important this is. I think in the beginning he didn’t fully grasp how significant this part of what he gets to do is. I think he understands it now.”
“And I’m pro-Don for the full four years,” McConnell adds.
