"Representing our commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime," McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor Thursday, signaling the closing chapter of a record-setting tenure for a party leader in the chamber.
In his comments, McConnell offered a brief history of his path to Capitol Hill and expressed gratitude for Kentucky voters who sent him to the chamber for seven terms and colleagues who entrusted him with leadership roles. The 15-minute speech saw the Republican heavy-hitter again walking a fine line between party fealty and carefully-worded warnings — a McConnell trademark — about the dangers of failing to uphold the values and norms of the Senate.
McConnell, who has cast several votes in recent weeks against President Donald Trump's nominees, reiterated the importance of ensuring that agency leaders remain committed to the rule of law.
"When members of this body ignore, discount, or pervert this fundamental duty, they do so not just at the peril of the Senate, but of the whole nation," he said, avoiding any mention of Trump.
"Regardless of the political storms that may wash over this chamber during the time I have remaining, I assure our colleagues that I will depart with great hope for the endurance of the Senate as an institution."Sen. Mitch McConnell
The senator's uneasy relationship with the rise of populist forces within his own party has come to define the latter part of his career, which has seen a lawmaker go from a dominant, agenda-setting political force to a voice of caution amid a volatile transformation of GOP politics.
"McConnell, for most of his career, has articulated the sort of Reagan-Bush Republicanism, that was dominant when he first joined the political system," UK political scientist Stephen Voss says. "For McConnell to end his career is sort of a punctuation mark on the 20th Century Republican Party and an announcement that the new Trump-era Republican Party really has taken power."
In his announcement, McConnell expressed confidence in the endurance of the Senate as an institution regardless of the "political storms which may wash over this chamber."
"It's going to take a long time for people to appreciate the effect of this change that's coming," Voss told WUKY.
It's also the close of a chapter of American politics that witnessed dramatic gains for Republicans under McConnell's guiding hand — most notably, the controversial decision to deny former President Barack Obama a Supreme Court nominee in Merrick Garland.
"Conservatives have criticized McConnell for the compromises he made through most of his career, but McConnell brought conservatives a bigger and more abiding victory with the federal courts than almost anything they've gotten politicians who wore their conservatism more openly on their sleeves," Voss adds.
For McConnell's detractors, however, those wins are seen as laying the groundwork for Trump's now firm grip on Washington.
Yet Voss notes McConnell's posture toward the MAGA-wing of the party has always been arm's-length.
"McConnell's critics will suggest that he could have single handedly, with a few allies, stopped Donald Trump, could have had Donald Trump convicted in the Senate. We really don't have any evidence that McConnell ever had the votes to end Donald Trump's presidential ambitions," Voss says. "What we do know is that McConnell has been in a constant and difficult dance — or maybe I should say walking a tightrope — when it came to Donald Trump. He has indicated his displeasure with the Trump-style Republican party throughout Trump's reign. But at the same time, McConnell has been willing to make all the compromises needed to stay in power going into the Trump-era and to try to shape the direction of the Trump administration as best he could."
Looking forward, Voss says the senator's decision to announce now is a positive for Kentucky voters, giving candidates for his seat plenty of time to conduct proper campaigns and voters time to consider which direction they want to take.
