Washington politicos dogpile on Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell amid immigration stalemate
Washington can’t agree on much these days.
But it still manages to coalesce on its willingness to blame Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.
As prospects for a bipartisan deal on southern border security wither under the glare of presidential politics, political actors from the far right to the distant left are blasting McConnell for either cozying up too close to immigration reform or torpedoing it before a formal draft has even seen the light of day.
“The problem is almost always Mitch McConnell,” Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, Washington’s leading conservative think tank, told Fox Business.
Roberts is among those on the right who believe McConnell is willing to cede tough conservative goals on the border just to secure more aid to Ukraine, whose fight for sovereignty the Kentucky leader sees as a vital American interest.
Donald Trump Jr. has castigated McConnell of “doing the bidding of Dems” by “trying to sneak a mass amnesty for illegals” into the legislation. Fox host Laura Ingraham has dubbed it “the Schumer-McConnell border bill,” in order to taint it as a capitulation.
It’s a characterization of a bill that reportedly would force the federal government to shut down the border during surges of illegal crossings that surpass more than 5,000 a week or 8,500 on a single day. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 302,034 southwest border encounters during the month of December alone.
The compromise would also accelerate the adjudication of asylum cases and increase the number of visas granted.
A Harvard/Harris poll conducted this month found immigration to be the top issue in the country, tracking ahead of price increases and inflation.
And yet the bellowing backlash on the right has downgraded odds that the legislation – tying American security at home with Ukraine’s security abroad – will be brought to the Senate floor for a vote this week.
“It’s not entirely clear to me that they’re ever going to put this on the floor in the Senate,” said Brendan Buck, a former top GOP congressional aide, on his Control podcast.
The souring feelings about a deal has also animated McConnell’s critics on the left, who are pummeling him for potentially abandoning a months-long solution-in-the-making in order to appease Donald Trump and his MAGA base, who prefer to use the issue against President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential campaign.
“Even Mitch McConnell has surrendered to Vladimir Putin and he’s surrendered to Donald Trump,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, the California chairman of the House Democratic caucus.
As the Senate returned Tuesday afternoon, McConnell was tight-lipped about where things stood on the supplemental border-Ukraine allocation, only telling a reporter, “We’re working on it.”
Some senators conveyed they were taking a wait-and-see approach, saying they would need to see the full text before coming to any decision.
But others in McConnell’s caucus were already savaging him publicly.
Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who unsuccessfully challenged McConnell for GOP leader last year, penned an op-ed Tuesday that claimed the bill lacked “accountability for Ukraine spending and real border security.”
“That’s why McConnell’s plan to give Biden and Democrats a win that they can campaign on and claim they’re working to solve the border crisis is a joke,” Scott wrote.
GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin piled on, blaming McConnell for a failed negotiating strategy.
A McConnell spokesperson declined to respond to the rebukes from McConnell’s fellow Republican colleagues.
But it’s Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma – not McConnell – who has been deputized to hammer out the details of the agreement, along with Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
That won’t stop the seething skepticism that conservatives have of McConnell, whose grip on his caucus is once again loosening as Trump re-ascends as the party’s presumptive White House nominee.
“McConnell can no longer be effective in his role as a result of Trump’s current strength in the party. There is too much evidence that he’d rather see Biden re-elected than give Trump any cover,” said Dan Stein, the head of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
And even if McConnell were to cobble together a coalition of Republicans to pair with Democrats and muscle the bill through the Senate, the compromise would face even higher hurdles in the Republican-controlled House.
“Seems like much less GOP support in the Senate than previously so I don’t see how it would possibly get to the House,” said Robyn Yakira Barnard, the senior director for refugee advocacy at Human Rights First.
And Buck, who has witnessed many congressional bargains before, noted, “If you’re McConnell and you have to try to convince your folks to take what is clearly a tough vote, when you know it’s not going to pass in the House, that’s a much harder whipping job. Why stick your neck out for something that’s not going to become law?”
This story was originally published January 31, 2024 at 12:41 PM with the headline "Washington politicos dogpile on Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell amid immigration stalemate."
