Some of Mitch McConnell’s critics on the populist right have argued that he ought to step down as Senate minority leader immediately, rather than wait until after the November election. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, for example, asks, “Why wait? Americans deserve actual conservative leadership.”
Be careful what you wish for.
To start with, it’s an odd change of tune for McConnell’s critics to demand that a leadership fight be held now, rather than after the elections. If you recall back in 2022, when Rick Scott was mounting the most serious challenge to McConnell in his tenure — which still garnered only ten votes when it was settled in mid November — Scott supporters argued that the contest should be put off to allow newly elected senators to take their seats so that the leader would be picked by the caucus he would actually run. They even made a formal motion to stay the vote until after Herschel Walker’s runoff in Georgia, which of course he lost. If you want to pull the caucus to the right, why hold a vote now before Mitt Romney is replaced in Utah, or before the GOP potentially gains new senators in Montana and West Virginia?
True, a leader chosen now might be voted down in a few months, but that ignores the extent to which a new leader, once selected, could entrench himself. True, McConnell may use the intervening months to help support whichever candidate he prefers, but if anything, he has more leverage to do that now.
What would be accomplished by a divisive and potentially losing leadership fight in an election season when Republicans have already displayed a surfeit of dysfunction to the electorate? The chaos in the House after dumping Kevin McCarthy certainly doesn’t recommend the virtues of a mid-session leadership fight, and while it’s early to judge Mike Johnson’s leadership, it’s hard to conclude that he has made any sort of significant improvement in outcomes thus far compared with McCarthy. Caucus leaders matter, but there are hard limits to how much they matter; they are always constrained not only by the size of their caucus and its support in the other chamber and the White House, but also by the internal composition of the caucus.
What are the odds that conservatives end up happy with the outcome? Without minimizing the fair criticisms of McConnell, I always ask, compared to whom? When was the last time Republicans had a better leader in the Senate?
Since the Second World War, the GOP has picked a new Senate leader during the session three times. In 1996, Majority Whip Trent Lott succeeded Bob Dole when Dole resigned after cinching the nomination. In 1969, Minority Whip Hugh Scott replaced Everett Dirksen after Dirksen died. In 1953, Republican Policy Committee chair William Knowland replaced Robert Taft after Taft died. The electoral outcomes varied — the Republican caucus gained two seats in 1996 and in 1970, whereas they lost two seats and the chamber in 1954 — but the important point is that mid-session leadership contests worked to the benefit of people already in leadership, with the next in line taking over in two of the three cases. And while Knowland was fairly conservative for his day and Lott was more conservative than his predecessor, it’s not clear that today’s critics of McConnell would consider any of those three men a smashing success.