A much deserved thank you to Senator Mitch McConnell | Wadhams | Opinion

For the 18-year term of the US Senate Mitch McConnell as a Republican of the Senate, he was slandered as “establishment” by Tea Party and Maga activists.

During this time he was the master of the Senate rules during this time whether he was the minority leader or the majority leader, who applied for a compromise with Democrats if he had to say goodbye. But he was also a violent partisan who took no prisoners on the Senate or in the Senate race across the country.

McConnell embodied the saying of an unknown old philosopher “Politics is not a bean bag”.

After the Republicans won a solid majority of 53-47 in the Senate in 2024, McConnell resigned as a Republican leader. He is the longest -serving Senate guide in history.

In these 18 years, from 2007 to 2015, he served twice as chairman of the Senate reduction and from 2021 to 2025 and from 2015 to 2021 the majority leader of the Senate.

If there was one thing that was both Senate Democrats and many conservative activists, their frustration over McConnell’s leadership style, it was for many different reasons. Senate Democrats often became through his mastery of the rules of the Arcan Senate, which made him an impressive partisan enemy on the Senate floor. Ironically, conservative activists thought that he was too accommodating for the Democrats of the Senate and did not fight hard enough.

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Nothing defines McConnell’s effectiveness and steel as a majority leader more than what the US Court of Justice suddenly died in February 2016.

President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland last year, who worked as a successor to Scalia before the Washington Court of Appeal. Obama described Garland as a moderate judge who should be pleasant for both parties.

The majority leader McConnell made Obama clear that there would be no measures against Garland nomination during the heated presidential year 2016 in the Senate. He said that the American people had to have a say who would replace Scalia by selecting a new president to fulfill the temporary Obama, and the new president could then make a new nomination in 2017.

Democrats howled, but McConnell remained tight and unmoved. Garland’s nomination died of Senate Vine when Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, which enabled him to name Neil Gorsuch in 2017, which was served on the 10th Court of Appeal.

McConnell received 235 federal judges who were nominated by President Trump, including two other judges from the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, who created a majority of the conservative court 6: 3.

But it all started that McConnell’s hardball at the Senate kept the Scalia seat open during 2016. Had Hillary Clinton Trump defeated in 2016, she would have filled all three open seats on the pitch. How often do the elections have consequences.

In cooperation with the Republican spokesman for the US representative of Paul Ryan, McConnell Trump’s necessary tax-cut legislation moved to the law.

Trump had no prominent or more effective ally than McConnell when it came to approving the judges and saying the legislation, but her relationship finally broke through Trump’s behavior during January 6, 2021, violent attack on the US Capitol and Trump Obsession in obsession in 2020 The election was fraudulent and stolen by him.

Apart from his leadership in the Senate, McConnell was just as effective to choose other Republicans for the Senate. Before he became the Republican leader, he headed the National Republican Senator Committee, the only reason for the Republicans’ existence.

Most of the time, republican candidates who had lost during the term of McConnell were outside the mainstream of their states and wasted winnable races. Who can forget the Republican candidate, the “I’m not a witch” or the one who spoke about “legitimate rape”.

When the former US representative John Thune, who lost a election in the Senate in 2002, decided to question the impressive democratic chairman of the Senate, Tom Daschle in South Dakota in 2004, had doubts among many Republicans in Washington, DC Thune . They had the feeling that he could only keep the race nearby and prevent Daschle from collecting money for other democratic candidates across the country.

McConnell was the deputy republican leader in 2004, and he firmly believed that Thune gained this thing together with the then majority leader of the Senate, Bill deadline.

McConnell was right. Thune annoyed Daschle, which was defeated for the first time in 52 years for re -election. McConnell’s support was not a small part of this victory.

Ironically, McConnell’s successor to McConnell is now the majority leader of the Senate, John Thune,.

Thank you very much, Senator Mitch McConnell.

Dick Wadhams is a former chairman of the Republican state of Colorado, who led campaigns for us. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard and governor Bill Owens. In 2004 he was campaign manager of the US majority leader John Thune.