{"id":2189922,"date":"2024-03-01T07:13:02","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T12:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/senate-democrats-panic-about-what-a-post-mcconnell-gop-could-bring\/"},"modified":"2024-03-01T07:13:02","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T12:13:02","slug":"senate-democrats-panic-about-what-a-post-mcconnell-gop-could-bring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/senate-democrats-panic-about-what-a-post-mcconnell-gop-could-bring\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Democrats panic about what a post-McConnell GOP could bring"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsenate-democrats-panic-about-what-a-post-mcconnell-gop-could-bring%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2189922&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Democrats are being forced to reckon with the uncomfortable reality that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell\u2019s (R-KY) decision to step down has placed them in.<\/p>\n<p> No one in the Democratic Party would claim to be a great fan of McConnell, but his departure as the top Senate Republican puts them in a bind. Democrats have long made McConnell a boogeyman, vilifying him for everything from blocking former President Barack Obama\u2019s nomination of current Attorney General Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court to refusing to hold former President Donald Trump\u2019s second impeachment trial until after he left office.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> With his departure now confirmed and the contest to be his successor well underway, Democrats are fretting about what comes next and musing to the Washington Examiner that perhaps McConnell wasn\u2019t the worst negotiating partner after all.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> \u201cI disagreed with Mitch McConnell on a huge number of issues,\u201d Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said. \u201cI believe his work, particularly to advance Donald Trump\u2019s agenda to give us an extreme Supreme Court, has done immeasurable damage to our nation. Even so, his replacement could be worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> \u201cIf the Republicans in the Senate go the way of the House and spend all of their time parroting whatever Donald Trump tells them to say, then our nation is in even bigger trouble,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p> \u201cI hope that whoever the replacement is, it\u2019s not more of a MAGA kind of agent of chaos,\u201d Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said. \u201cIt\u2019s not entertainment; it\u2019s about governance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> McConnell has emerged as a bipartisan figure in recent years despite his strong conservative bona fides, the result of his commitment to protecting the filibuster and his opposition to Trump and the isolationist policies put forward by the populist wing of his party.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> The filibuster is of particular importance to McConnell, who views the rule as critical to protecting the Senate as an institution. He refused to agree to a dual governing coalition with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in early 2020, when both parties shared control of the chamber 50-50, until he had assurances from Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) that they would not support Democratic-led efforts to abolish the filibuster.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> He has also been willing to support several bipartisan efforts in the upper chamber under President Joe Biden as a result, including the infrastructure bill and the defense supplemental spending bill that provided assistance to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> \u201cWhen you consider what we were able to accomplish last Congress, bipartisan legislation [like the] infrastructure bill, CHIPS, veterans healthcare expansion, marriage equality, these things require that we all work together. I disagree with Sen. McConnell on a lot of things, but that legislation does not happen without him,\u201d Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) told the Washington Examiner.<\/p>\n<p> \u201cMy hope is that Republicans who are going to vote to elect another Republican leader will realize the same thing, that the country is a better place when we can do things in a bipartisan way,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader of all time, announced on Wednesday that this Congress would be his last as head of the GOP conference. The news sparked renewed interest in his potential successors, of which there are currently three natural heirs: Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD), Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY), and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who announced his run on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p> The trio of possible Republican leaders, described around Washington as the \u201cThree Johns\u201d due to their shared moniker, are all members of McConnell\u2019s leadership team. Cornyn was term-limited out of his role as whip, with Thune succeeding him, but has remained a key McConnell adviser and ally.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER<\/p>\n<p> It\u2019s not clear if any other members of the conference will step forward to try and take on McConnell\u2019s mantle, though Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) has been rumored to be considering a bid.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> For his part, Trump has not endorsed any candidate, potential or declared, in the contest.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Democrats are being forced to reckon with the uncomfortable reality that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell\u2019s (R-KY) decision to step down has placed them in. No one in the Democratic Party would claim to be a great fan of McConnell, but his departure as the top Senate Republican puts them in a bind. Democrats have<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2656,"featured_media":2189923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/wex-s3.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/AP23341510034744-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[538],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2189922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-washington-examiner"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/wex-s3.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/AP23341510034744-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2656"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2189922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2189923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2189922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2189922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2189922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}