A very deserved ‘Thank you’ to Senator Mitch McConnell | Wadhams | Opinion

For most of us Senator Mitch McConnell’s 18-year tenure as Senat’s Republican leader, he was destroyed as an “establishment” that was not Tea Party and Maga activists.

Throughout that time, whether he was a minority leader or majority leader, he was the champion of the Senate rules seeking compromise with Democrats when he needed to have something adopted. But he was also a tough partisan who did not take any prisoners on the Senate floor or in Senate races across the country.

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

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

During these 18 years he served double as Senate minority leader from 2007 to 2015 and from 2021 to 2025, and he was Senate’s majority leader from 2015 to 2021.

If there was one thing that united both the Senate Democrats and many conservative activists were their frustration over McConnell’s leadership style – but for very different reasons. The Senate Democrats were often flummox by his mastery of Arcane Senate rules that made him a formidable partisanfjen on the Senate floor. Ironically, conservative activists believed he was too welcoming to the Senates Democrats and did not fight hard enough.

Keep up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

Nothing defines McConnell’s effectiveness and solves Steely as a majority leader more than what happened when US Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia suddenly died in February 2016.

President Barack Obama nominated in his last year as president quickly Merrick Garland, who served in Washington, DC Court of Appeals, to succeed Scalia. Obama described Garland as a moderate judge who should be comfortable for both parties.

Majority leader McConnell made it clear to Obama that there would be no action in the Senate of Garland -nomination in the presidential election year of 2016. He said the American people had to have an opinion on who would replace Scalia by to choose a new president to get the term -limited Obama, and the new president could then put forward a new nomination in 2017.

Democrats howled, but McConnell remained firm and motionless. The Garland nomination died on Senate’s wines when Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, enabling him to nominate Neil Gorsuch in 2017, which earned at the 10th appeal in Denver.

McConnell continued to have 235 federal judges confirmed who was nominated by President Trump, including two more Supreme Court Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, who created a 6-3 conservative court majority.

But it all started with McConnell’s hardball on the Senate floor kept the Scalia seat open throughout 2016. Had Hillary Clinton defeated Trump in 2016, she would have filled all three of these open seats on the field. As often said, choices have consequences.

In connection with the Republican speaker for the US representative, Paul Ryan, McConnell Trump’s landmark moved tax law to law.

Trump had no more prominence or effective an ally than McConnell when it came to getting judges approved and legislation passed, but their relationship eventually broke over Trump’s behavior during January 6, 2021, violent attack on the US capital and Trump’s Occupation 2020 elections were fraudulent and stolen from him.

In addition to his leadership in the Senate, McConnell was equally effective in helping to choose other Republicans for the Senate. Before becoming the Republican leader, he was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, whose sole reason to exist is to help choose Republicans.

More often than not Republican candidates who lost during McConnell’s term of office, outside the mainstream of their states and scattered windable races. Who can forget the Republican candidate who had to declare “I am not a witch” or the one who spoke of “legitimate rape.”

Since the former American Rep. John Thune, who lost a Senate election in 2002, decided to challenge the formidable Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle in South Dakota in 2004, there was doubt among many Republicans in Washington, DC Thune could win. They felt that he could only keep the race close and prevent Daschle from raising money for other democratic candidates around the nation.

McConnell was the assistant Republican leader in 2004, and he strongly believed that Thune could win and devote himself to this case with Senate’s majority leader Bill Deadline at that time.

McConnell was right. Thune disturbed Daschle, who was the first time, a Senate leader was defeated for re -election of 52 years. McConnell’s support was no small part of this victory.

Ironically, McConnell’s leadership sequelae is now Senate’s majority leader John Thune.

Thanks, late. Mitch McConnell.

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican State President who managed campaigns for us Sens. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard and Head of Government Bill Owens. He was campaign manager for the US Senate Majority Leader John Thune in 2004.