Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), longtime Republican Party leader in the Senate, announced he won’t be running for re-election come 2026. The announcement wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it did spark quite an uproar of reactions. MAGA Republicans across the nation – many of whom called for the aged lawmaker to resign after a fall in December – took to social media to express their feelings regarding the announcement. The responses were varied, but the best way to sum up the general idea of it would probably be “good riddance.”
The End of McConnell Is the End of an Age
“History became legend. Legend became myth,” said the character Galadriel in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. Thus, one might say, it went with McConnell, who was first elected to the Senate in 1984. Okay, so perhaps that’s not quite long enough to transition from history to legend to myth – but it’s certainly long enough, according to many in President Donald Trump’s new Republican Party, that his retirement is long overdue.
With forty years in his seat, the Kentucky lawmaker is the longest-serving senator in Kentucky’s history and the tenth longest in America’s. Never in the US Senate has a party held onto a leader this long – 18 years since 2007 – and the closest competitor, Michael J. Mansfield (D-MT), served 16 from 1961 to 1977. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) – the Democratic Party’s current Senate leader and, therefore, the only one who could beat McConnell’s record given another decade in leadership – has only held that position since 2017 and his seat since 1999.
The senior statesman, who turned 83 on the day of his announcement, has become the poster child for the term limits movement. As Liberty Nation News Senior Political Analyst Tim Donner wrote almost a year ago:
“The handwriting appeared to be on the wall when the octogenarian froze while answering a reporter’s question on two occasions in 2023. Widespread speculation about the cause of his lapses centered around a concussion caused by an ugly spill in March of ’23.”
McConnell suffered another fall in December of 2024, this time at the Capitol, which marked the fourth such medical scare in just 21 months. By then, many of the more America First bent in the GOP who hadn’t already called for his resignation began to join the choir.
Biden and McConnell – a Cozy Couple?
As Mr. Donner suggested last year, however, one wonders how much of McConnell’s decision to leave leadership then – or, more recently, to retire at the end of this term – was because he genuinely felt it’s the time for younger hands at the helm or because a second Trump presidency would be a greater burden for him to bear than the reign of President Joe Biden. The former GOP leader and President Trump butted heads on numerous occasions and have often criticized each other. McConnell even went as far as saying Trump was responsible for the January 6, 2021, “insurrection” at the Capitol, though he didn’t vote to convict in the impeachment trial over “constitutional concerns.”
During the Biden presidency, McConnell was, at times, quick to side with Biden and the Democrats over his more conservative colleagues. In 2021, he voted in favor of Biden’s $1 trillion “infrastructure” bill and later for Biden’s $1.5 trillion omnibus and supplemental package in 2022. He and a small group of establishment Republicans helped Democrats pass the first gun-control bill in three decades, the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Then there was the CHIPS Act. Several times, this 40-year “stalwart” of the GOP abandoned the majority of his peers and sided with President Biden and the Democrats.
More recently, McConnell voted against confirming three of President Trump’s new Cabinet nominees – Secretary of State Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Interestingly enough, he chose not to oppose Trump’s other controversial pick, Kash Patel, who was recently confirmed as director of the FBI.
Is it any wonder, then, that many MAGA Republicans are saying “good riddance”?
