McConnell exit surprises GOP: ‘It’s Trump’s party now’

GOP senators say Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) saw the writing on the wall in choosing this term to be his final as Senate Republican leader, arguing it’s increasingly obvious that the party is drifting away from him and embracing former President Trump as its likely presidential nominee.

“I think it’s a reflection of Mitch’s understanding of the room. I think it’s a reflection of both his personal situation as he described eloquently in his speech and his reading of the political climate and his respect for that,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said after McConnell announced his decision not to run for another term as Senate leader in an emotional floor speech.

McConnell has faced relentless pressure from longtime critics such as Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), and they have steadily gained supporters in recently elected conservatives such as Sens. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

All of those Republicans are aligned with Trump, who in just the last two months has reasserted himself as the GOP kingmaker in and out of Washington, D.C.

Some of those Republicans said a changing of the guard is appropriate given how much the party has changed since Trump’s stunning election to the presidency in 2016.

“I think it’s a good thing,” said Vance, who was elected to the Senate with Trump’s endorsement in 2022, when asked about McConnell stepping down from leadership.

“Hopefully we get a Republican leader a little more in tune with the preferences of our voters, but we’ll see,” he said.

A Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss the political pressures on McConnell, said the announcement caught many colleagues by surprise.

The senator called the backlash from conservatives over the bipartisan border security deal “vicious.”

“He said, ‘I can read the political tea leaves,’ or something to that effect,” the senator said. “After you’ve been leader for 18 years, who wants to go out with your colleagues ripping on you?”

A Senate Republican aide said, “it’s Trump’s party now.”

“It’s the end of the Reagan era and now the MAGA era,” the source said.

Speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday, McConnell reminisced about the good old days of his early Senate career, when Ronald Reagan, a Republican with a radically different vision of key issues, was president.

“My career in the United States Senate began amidst the Reagan Revolution. The truth is, when I got here, I was just happy if anybody remembered my name,” he recalled fondly.

“President Reagan called me ‘Mitch O’Donnell’. Close enough, I thought. My wife Elaine and I got married on President Reagan’s birthday, February 6th. It’s probably not the most romantic thing to admit, but Reagan meant a great deal to both of us,” he recounted.

McConnell talked about how the devastating loss of his sister-in-law, who died in a car accident this month, had prompted introspection about his own life’s journey.

“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” he said, adding that he would formally hand over the reins of leadership in January and serve out the remainder of his Senate term through 2026.

He bluntly informed colleagues that he’s not planning to recede into the shadows before he retires.

“I still have enough gas in the tank to thoroughly disappoint my critics and intend to do so with all the enthusiasm with which they have become accustomed,” he quipped.

McConnell gave a few of his closest allies advanced warning before the speech of his plan, but the bombshell news caught many colleagues by surprise.

After he spoke on the Senate floor, he walked across the Ohio Clock Corridor into the weekly Senate Steering Committee lunch, hosted by one of his most outspoken critics — Lee — where colleagues gave him what they described as a “warm” and “cordial” reception.

McConnell ignored the theories that he was stepping down from power because of the bruising battle he fought with Senate conservatives over a Ukraine funding and border security package that he helped Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) negotiate with Democrats.

And he didn’t address the elephant in the room, namely that Trump, with whom he had a bitter falling out three years ago, just won the South Carolina and Michigan primaries and is cruising to the Republican presidential nomination.

He told his colleagues that he made his decision weeks ago, at the start of the year, not to run for another term as Republican leader, implying that the messy fight with GOP colleagues over the border security deal and Trump’s growing political power weren’t pushing him to announce a hasty retirement.

“The only thing that he said that was different in caucus from what he said on the floor was that he really had decided previously that this was his last term as leader,” said a GOP senator who attended the meeting.

A second senator confirmed that McConnell told colleagues he made his decision “long ago.”

A third person familiar with McConnell’s comments said he informed colleagues that he decided at the start of this year to step down from leadership after the November election, even though Republicans have an excellent chance of regaining the Senate majority, which is McConnell’s top political priority.

McConnell still hasn’t endorsed Trump even though most of his leadership team already has, including Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), Senate Republican Conference Chair John Barrasso (Wyo.), Conference Vice Chair Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines (Mont.) and Sen. John Cornyn (Texas).

The New York Times reported Monday that McConnell’s longtime confidant and strategist, Josh Holmes, has been in talks with senior Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita about making amends between the two leaders and setting the stage for McConnell to endorse Trump later this year.

A person familiar with those negotiations told The Hill Wednesday that McConnell’s personal relationship with Trump or the talks about eventually endorsing the GOP front-runner had no impact on McConnell’s decision to retire from leadership.

“I see it as a parallel track,” the source said. “That’s the stuff he would be doing anyway because it’s part of his job to make sure we’ve got as united a front on the Republican side going into the election as we can. We did something similar in 2016.”

The person familiar with McConnell’s thinking about retirement said it “had nothing to do” with the likelihood that Trump might win the 2024 election and then put pressure on Senate Republicans to find a new leader.

The source emphasized that McConnell was able to put aside his differences with Trump during the 2016 election and work with him collaboratively during his presidency from 2017 through 2020.

“When he decides he wants to do something, you can’t talk him out of it. He decided to retire,” the source said of McConnell’s surprise announcement.

“He’s always told us: ‘I’ll know,’” the source said. “He just decided. He knew it was time.”

Uncharacteristically, McConnell mentioned his age, 82, on the Senate floor twice Wednesday, the source observed.

Colleagues could not remember McConnell ever mentioning his age before.