OPINION:
The Senate majority leader has been something of an underrated miracle worker for his party over the past several years. Without Mitch McConnell, the White House and the Republican Party might never have achieved the enormous successes they did in the nearly four years of the Trump presidency. Nor is it likely President Trump would have become the odds-on favorite for reelection in the pre-pandemic era. Even the president’s win over Hillary Clinton can be traced to Mr. McConnell’s savvy political advice on how to campaign on the issue of judges.
Consider one of his most important accomplishments, the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. When the chief executive in April of 2017 demanded that congressional Republicans send him a supply-side tax reform bill to his desk by Christmas, Senate Democrats were in total opposition and Mr. McConnell’s party had just a two-vote majority (52-48), with several very uncertain trumpets among the 52. But Mr. McConnell persuaded 51 of the 52 Republican senators to approve the bill. (John McCain was absent because of illness.) The results: A boom so spectacular that the polls show the president’s handling of the economy is still his strongest suit to play in winning a second term.
When the president’s job was threatened by House impeachment, Mr. McConnell swooped to the rescue, convincing every Republican senator save Mitt Romney to keep the president in the Oval Office. Or, as CNN put it in a news story: “How Mitch McConnell orchestrated the end to Trump’s impeachment trial … .”
The Kentucky Republican’s most impressive achievement, of course, has been his transformation of the federal courts. He will have pushed through the Senate nearly 300 federal judges by the end of this year, has managed to put two new Scalia-like “originalists” on the U.S. Supreme Court and apparently has rounded up enough Republicans to install a third, Antonin Scalia’s law clerk Amy Coney Barrett. By June of this year, he had filled every vacancy at the Circuit Court level, the final authority for 95% of federal cases, tilting even the liberal 9th Circuit in a conservative direction.
Mr. McConnell’s most important task at this perilous moment in the election cycle is to help Republicans maintain control of the U.S. Senate, the only legislative body that can rein in the Biden-Harris agenda if the House remains in Democratic hands and the president loses the White House. The Republicans have just a 53-47 seat majority in the Senate. If Joe Biden wins and the Democrats pick up just three seats, the Republicans would control 50, but the then-vice president, Kamala Harris, could break any tie if the upper chamber splits along party lines.
Keeping that majority will not be easy, with justified fears that Mr. Trump might drag down the ticket in key races held by Senate Republicans. Mr. McConnell, however, appears to believe the confirmation fight over Judge Barrett can potentially save his Senate majority and possibly put Mr. Trump over the top.
People forget how crucial he was in electing Mr. Trump in 2016. Mr. McConnell persuaded the Republican nominee to convince supporters that he was deadly serious about filling the courts with young, dedicated conservatives. (There was much doubt because Mr. Trump had suggested he might name his liberal sister, a federal appellate court judge, to the high court.) Mr. McConnell told him to publish a list of potential court appointees but to make sure they had the approval of the prestigious, right-leaning Federalist Society. Mr. Trump agreed, eventually putting out a list of 21 names, with critical input from the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The New York billionaire turned politician exploited the issue for all it was worth. “If you really like Donald Trump … That’s great,” he would tell folks gathered at those monster rallies, “but if you don’t, you have to vote for me anyway — you know why? Supreme Court judges!”
“The single biggest issue in bringing Republicans home … was the Supreme Court,” Mr. McConnell remarked to The Washington Post, an assertion affirmed by post-election surveys and underscored by the votes of White evangelical Christians. When the Senate confirmed Judge Neil Gorsuch to the high court in April 2017, with all Republican senators in favor, Mr. McConnell was treated like a rock star among the party faithful. The majority leader, as a key staffer told me, was suddenly receiving “standing ovations” when attending GOP gatherings, boisterous welcomes that lasted for months.
Nor was this the end of the story. Mr. Trump’s now famous list of 21 not only helped salvage the president’s candidacy but became a guide for the critical choices he picked in his ongoing effort to reshape the Courts of Appeals.
Will the raising of Judge Barrett to the Supreme Court save the Senate for the GOP? It may be a long shot, but Mr. McConnell clearly thinks her nomination will raise issues that will again propel conservative-leaning voters to the polls — issues like religious liberty, gun rights, abortion on demand and, now, Biden-Harris court packing. She is clearly a brilliant legal scholar whose family and faith are a major positive so far as surveys reveal. And a Hail Mary Pass, as Judge Barrett’s co-religionists will tell you, frequently gets the job done.
• Allan H. Ryskind, a former editor and owner of Human Events, is the author of “Hollywood Traitors” (Regnery, 2015).
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