Sen. Mitch McConnell, freshly removed from an 18-year stint as GOP leader where his primary objective was to protect his party’s interests, cast a vote Friday night showing he is willing to go against the grain as a rank-and-file senator.
Mr. McConnell, a Kentucky Republican and defense hawk, voted against confirming Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon, saying Mr. Hegseth failed to show he was prepared to serve as the “most consequential cabinet official.”
“Mere desire to be a ‘change agent’ is not enough to fill these shoes,” he said, quoting Mr. Hegseth’s pitch. “And ‘dust on boots’ fails even to distinguish this nominee from multiple predecessors of the last decade. Nor is it a precondition for success. Secretaries with distinguished combat experience and time in the trenches have failed at the job.”
After stepping down from leadership at the end of the 118th Congress, Mr. McConnell has said his top priority as a rank-and-file senator would be to promote national defense and U.S. alliances in democracy.
While his opposition to Mr. Hegseth did not fully come as a surprise, his colleagues said Mr. McConnell did not tell them how he was going to vote.
“I wasn’t sure,” Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker, Mississippi Republican, said Thursday after Mr. McConnell initially voted to advance Mr. Hegseth’s nomination through a procedural hurdle.
Even President Trump was confused when speaking with reporters about the procedural vote on Friday morning.
“Of course, Mitch is always a no-vote, I guess,” he said. “Is Mitch a no-vote? How about Mitch?”
When it came time for the final vote on Friday night, Mr. McConnell joined fellow GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and all 47 Democrats in opposing Mr. Hegseth’s nomination.
That forced Vice President J.D. Vance to step in and break a 50-50 tie, only the second time a Cabinet official has been confirmed in a tie-breaking vote after Mr. Trump’s first-term Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Mr. Hegseth failed to demonstrate that he can handle the daily tests of managing “nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world,” Mr. McConnell said.
Specifically, he said Mr. Hegseth could not articulate a strategic vision for dealing with threats from China or whether the U.S. should defend Taiwan or the Philippines against a Chinese attack.
“Absent, too, was any substantive discussion of countering our adversaries’ alignment with deeper alliance relationships and more extensive defense industrial cooperation of our own,” Mr. McConnell said.
The senator, who now chairs the defense appropriations subcommittee, was especially disappointed that Mr. Hegseth couldn’t even back a widely supported GOP plan to boost defense spending.
“President Trump has rightly called on NATO allies to spend more on our collective defense,” Mr. McConnell said. “But the nominee who would have been responsible for leading that effort wouldn’t even commit to growing America’s defense investment beyond the low bar set by the Biden administration’s budget requests.”
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.