Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s announcement that he will step down from his leadership post in the fall has sparked a lot of reflections on his reign, both positive and negative.
A common criticism of McConnell during this period was that — at least until the Ukraine debate of the last two years — he often advanced no coherent policy priorities but only legislative tactics. Sometimes people put this in positive terms, describing McConnell as a kind of ideal consigliere who could take the goals of a Republican president, whatever those were, and make them happen. Others have described this in negative terms, as a kind of pure proceduralism that refused to give Senate Republicans any substantive direction, and even discouraged them from taking positions on matters of policy substance as a group.
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