McConnell’s impeachment stance shows his disregard for Constitution and his duty
Among the Republicans who have criticized former Governor Matt Bevin for his now notorious pardons during his last week in office is Kentucky’s senior senator, Mitch McConnell. The Senate Majority Leader deemed at least some of Bevin’s pardons “inappropriate,” in consideration of the gravity of the crimes committed.
Senator McConnell made this judgment the very same week in which he went on Sean Hannity’s show to assure Donald Trump’s main Fox News shill that McConnell was working hand in glove with the White House in making sure that the upcoming Senate trial would end favorably for the president. McConnell expressed confidence that not one Republican would vote to convict the president. The evidence, he declared, “is pretty darn weak.” It was a McConnell observation as devoid of the truth as was his deeming the Mueller Report to have exonerated President Trump of any culpability regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election and the subsequent investigation of that interference.
The contrast in McConnell’s statements about the Bevin pardons and Trump’s looming impeachment trial could not be greater. It reveals a moral failing that should get everyone’s attention, especially the voters of Kentucky who will be deciding in 11 months whether McConnell deserves yet another term as the state’s senior senator.
Here you have the majority leader of the Senate who is perfectly capable of judging the wrongdoing of a Republican ex-governor back in his home state, but chooses to be oblivious to his own failure to honor his Constitutional duty, not only as a U.S. Senator, but as the Senate Majority Leader, to conduct impartial oversight of the president. There is no more momentous occasion for such oversight than an impeachment trial, as the Founders clearly intended.
McConnell’s performance on the Hannity show may have been shocking, but it should surprise no one who has followed McConnell closely in the Senate. No one has done more, as Senate Majority Leader, to undermine the Constitution and the democratic norms that have shaped our governance as has McConnell.
Whether one considers his making the Senate a dysfunctional body through his converting the filibuster rule into the norm for enacting legislation, or his setting as the top priority for the Senate making Barack Obama a one-term president, or his championing of Citizens United to maximize the corruption of elected officials, or his arrogating to himself the power to decide which nominees to the Supreme Court get the advice and consent of the Senate, or his refusal to take up the scores of legislative bills which have passed the House of Representatives, many of them having bipartisan support in the Senate — in all these ways McConnell has gravely abused his office.
McConnell, like Trump, gives every indication that he considers himself not bound by the law, much less by the spirit of the Constitution. Just as William Barr has made himself the legal protector of the president by virtually eliminating the Department of Justice as an independent body, so McConnell has dropped any pretense of the Senate being a part of a co-equal branch of the government in order to shield the president. So McConnell tried to bury the damning evidence of the Mueller Report about the conduct of President Trump by blithely declaring “case closed.” He has imperiled the integrity of the upcoming election by refusing to fund effectively the shoring up of our cybersecurity. And now he has topped off such malfeasance by making the upcoming impeachment trial an exercise in pathological partisanship. Such actions have earned him the moniker “Moscow Mitch.” Increasingly with the Senate Majority Leader, as ever with the president, all roads seemingly lead to Putin.
Critics have pointed out the flagrant ways in which President Trump flaunts his wrongdoing — describing his incriminating phone call with the Ukrainian president as “perfect;” claiming in a lawsuit that, as president, he is immune from even being investigated; dismissing all Congressional requests and subpoenas as illegitimate inroads upon his authority. As his outrageous interview with Hannity shows, Mitch McConnell is no slouch himself at flaunting his disregard for norms or any oath he will shortly take to do impartial justice in the trial of the President of the United States. Trump obviously believes that people in states like Kentucky will ultimately reward his wrongdoing by reelecting him. There is growing evidence that McConnell thinks the same about himself.
Robert Emmett Curran is a Professor of History Emeritus from Georgetown University who lives in Richmond.
This story was originally published December 17, 2019 at 9:41 AM.