After weeks of relying on Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) to negotiate a deal with the Democrats on border security, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has decided that he is going to throw the Oklahoma senator under the bus.
On Sunday night, Lankford’s long-awaited deal with the Democrats on border security, immigration, and funding for Israel and Ukraine was released. And immediately, Republicans in both the Senate and the House lined up to oppose it, citing numerous provisions that only serve to codify the border crisis.
Conservative senators such as Josh Hawley (R-MO), J.D. Vance (R-OH), Rick Scott (R-FL), and Mike Lee (R-UT) blasted the bill as a backdoor effort to protect illegal immigration, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) and the entire House Republican leadership proclaimed the bill would be dead on arrival in the House of Representatives, and former President Donald Trump said that “only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill.”
But Lankford had one stalwart ally in McConnell, who backed the deal as soon as it was released. That was until the senator from Kentucky abruptly turned around and told GOP senators they should vote against advancing the bill to the Senate floor if they didn’t like it.
It’s a stunning reversal for McConnell, who is much more at peace working with centrist Democrats than he is with the conservative wing of his own party. But the worst part about his flip-flop is his callous willingness to throw Lankford under the bus.
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Lest we forget, it was McConnell who tasked Lankford with negotiating this disastrous legislative proposal with the goal of eventually passing a sizable aid package for Israel and Ukraine. And McConnell, who cares more about his position atop the Republican conference than any legislative agenda, was all too quick to reverse course when he sensed the political winds were not in the bill’s favor.
McConnell may try to weasel his way out of shouldering the blame for this disaster of a bill, but Republican senators should not let him. There is no doubt that Lankford abysmally failed in his attempt to negotiate a workable border deal with Democrats, but the bulk of the blame should not be on him. It was McConnell who tasked him with it, it was McConnell who initially backed his deal, and as the leader of the Republican conference, it should be McConnell who faces the ire of the base, not Lankford.
