Is The Mitch McConnell Era About to End?

So, is long-time GOP senate leader Mitch McConnell about to announce his retirement? That rumor circulated across social media late Thursday, at least among conservative news sites like The Spectator:

Here’s an excerpt from that story:

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has been out of the public eye for weeks, following a serious fall that hospitalized him. Now multiple sources confirm that Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming, John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota are actively reaching out to fellow Republican senators in efforts to prepare for an anticipated leadership vote — a vote that would occur upon announcement that McConnell would be retiring from his duties as leader, and presumably the Senate itself.

One source says that Cornyn has been particularly active in his preparations, taking fellow senators with whom he has little in common to lunch in attempts to court them.

Requests are being targeted at a plethora of conservative senators, including the sixteen who voted to delay the leadership election earlier this year, a proxy for opposition to McConnell’s leadership. Rick Scott, the Florida senator and former NRSC head who challenged McConnell, ultimately received ten protest votes. These members could prove key to determining the next Republican leader. Queries are also being made internally about the rules regarding replacement, and how the contest would be structured given the lack of an obvious heir apparent.

McConnell fell at a dinner event for the Senate Leadership Fund on March 8 at the Waldorf Astoria, formerly the Trump Hotel, in Washington, DC. He suffered a concussion, and only after being treated at a hospital and at his home did murmurs begin that he might be unable to return to the Senate. These discussions increased in volume based on the inability of other senators to do their jobs — with California’s Dianne Feinstein missing votes due to a shingles diagnosis and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania’s hospitalization for depression.

[End]

Oh dear God, please spare us from the “leadership” of Big John Cornyn, the most useless senator from Texas since, well, ever. Then again, he can’t be any more useless than John Thune. Barrasso might be a little better, since he seems to still possess an honest conservative impulse from time to time. But any vestiges of that have been wrung completely out of Cornyn and Thune as they slowly let themselves be absorbed into the Deep State Borg in order to advance up the leadership chain.

If you’re celebrating the possible retirement of McConnell, you might want to take a brief step back and consider the alternatives here, because none of them are good. Not even the aspiring interloper Rick Scott, who is more than a bit of a hack himself.

Whatever else we think about Cocaine Mitch, he had until the past year or so proved to be perhaps the all-time Machiavellian master of leveraging arcane senate rules and procedure to his advantage and the advantage of GOP priorities, such as they have been. And hey, every once in a great while, those GOP priorities happen to align with what is actually best for the country, unlike the warped, woke priorities of the Democrats.

The thought that soppy milquetoast swamp creatures like Cornyn, Thune or Barrasso would be able to master and exert that leverage is mere wishful thinking.

All that having been said, Fox News is reporting this morning that McConnell isn’t planning to retire at all, and is in fact about to show back up to work after a 5-week absence:

Here’s an excerpt from that story:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced Thursday he plans to return to the Senate next Monday after an absence of over a month.

"I am looking forward to returning to the Senate on Monday. We've got important business to tackle and big fights to win for Kentuckians and the American people," McConnell tweeted.

McConnell has been missing from the Senate since early March after sustaining a concussion and other injuries from a fall. 

McConnell announced his return as a report, which has not been confirmed by Fox News, circulated suggesting other Republican senators were already jockeying for his post as Senate GOP leader.

[End]

So, should Cornyn and Thune stop measuring the drapes in the Minority Leader’s office now? Who the hell knows what the truth actually is here?

Here’s what we do know: The Senate is basically an assisted living center these days. McConnell is 81, and he’s not especially old among his peers. Nor is he especially unhealthy among them. Take the recent 2-month and more absence by John Fetterman as an example. Fetterman is one of the youngest Democrat senators, and he is just barely able to function most days.

Or how about ongoing calls from Democrats for Dianne Feinstein, age 89, to finally, at long last admit she’s been suffering from advancing dementia for at least a dozen years and call it a day.

Look, I don’t want to be cruel here - I’m getting old myself. But all of this points to a pressing need to somehow limit how long these corrupt individuals are able to hang onto these senate seats in their never-ending quests for more grift and graft.

I don’t really like term limits since they have proven to be so easy to bend and break whenever they’ve been tried. I’ve previously suggested a hard mandatory retirement age as a way to avoid situations like Feinstein and Pelosi and so many others who have hung on long past their truly functional lives just to accumulate more ill-gotten wealth and enjoy the narcotic of wielding power.

Because, let’s be honest - that’s what this has all become.

What’s the right age? 65 is too young - advances in human longevity and health care ensure that most of these folks remain vibrant well past that age. I’d go for more like 72 as an age beyond which no one would be allowed to run again for re-election. Including presidents, by the way, a prohibition that would have spared us our current Weekend at Biden’s charade.

Back to McConnell: A responsible, real leader would have transferred power some years ago, but as I said, wielding that power and playing those Machiavellian games is a very powerful narcotic. If McConnell’s health really is as unsteady as some reports would have us believe, then he would do a service to pick a preferred successor and use his powerful influence and leverage to ensure that person succeeds to the throne.

That chosen person won’t be anyone any of us might prefer - you’d have to give me Ted Cruz, Rand Paul or John Kennedy to make me happy - but the continuity and stability would be valuable.

At the end of the day, that’s sadly about the best we can hope for here.

That is all.