McConnell’s war on Trump is far from over

Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell (R), the longest-serving party leader in Senate history, announced his retirement Thursday afternoon to cheers and jeers (but mostly cheers). The ailing senator has spent much of the goodwill he might have acquired in his twilight years as an elder statesman on fighting his own party’s popular president.

Thus far, his lonely resistance to Donald Trump has been ineffective, but don’t count the old man out just yet. He’s still very powerful. And now, he really has nothing to lose.

He may have been forced by colleagues to step down from leadership and forced by failing health to announce his coming retirement, but Mitch McConnell is still a powerful and dangerous player.

The past month has not gone as McConnell planned or how he’s used to things going. When he pledged at the American Enterprise Institute’s gala to resist the president’s foreign policy agenda from inside the Senate (just one week after Trump won the popular vote), he did not envision that playing out as a lonely protest vote from the back benches.

He almost always gets his way — and he rarely has to do his own dirty work. His ally Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) led the charge against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. But the Republican resistance underestimated the swift and ferocious backlash. Ernst quickly backed down.

Next, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), his closest ally, secretly funneled abuse allegations against Hegseth from a disgruntled former in-law. The White House responded with a charm offensive, and Tillis caved. He didn’t have the cojones to be the fourth decisive vote after all.

Then came former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), nominated for director of national intelligence. Gabbard should have been a layup for the neocons, but when it came down to it, the president’s popularity won the day.

Now comes the fight over Elbridge Colby, who has been nominated to return for the second administration as undersecretary of defense for policy. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has taken the lead in opposing Colby, but if the vice president’s public beatdown of other anti-Colby voices is any indication, the White House isn’t planning to let the Senate’s duty to “advise and consent” present as the power to control the executive branch.

The Republican resistance imagines it has that power — just ask Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), whose cringeworthy speech detailed the concessions he demanded to support Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health and human services secretary.

But McConnell isn’t finished with Trump. He failed to block the president’s nominees, but as America’s least popular senator, he still wields significant influence. As head of the subcommittee on defense appropriations, he controls how funds are allocated — and for what. Expect him to use that power.

The Senate has surrendered many of its duties but still jealously guards appropriations. The chairwoman of the full appropriations committee is Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a friend of McConnell from a state Kamala Harris won by more than seven points. You can expect both to work to tie the president’s hands on funding the Ukraine war, regardless of White House foreign policy or personnel.

He may have been forced by colleagues to step down from leadership and forced by failing health to announce his coming retirement, but Mitch McConnell is still a powerful and dangerous player. Remember: Trump’s first impeachment was over Ukraine funding. The Grim Reaper’s time in the Senate may be coming to a close, but his battle is far from over.

Beltway Brief: Mitch McConnell’s secret war on Trump

Blaze News: The GOP whisper campaign against Tulsi Gabbard

The Federalist: McConnell’s retirement marks the end of the disastrous Bush era

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