NEW: I spent a good bit of time this summer on McConnell’s last big campaign, the only way he’s confronting Trumpism: by trying to keep his party away from isolationism On the inside game, from Helsinki and Munich to DC and Fancy Farm
McConnell, ever cautious about turning himself into a lame duck, usually sniffs out and dismisses rearview-facing questions about his legacy. However, the man who set up his Senate institute and archives the year after his first reelection has long been consumed by history — and his place in it.
At the outset of our interview, and without prompting, McConnell recalled how his father served in Patton’s Army during World War II and became uneasy with the Soviets by war’s end. Billy Piper, a former McConnell chief of staff, recalled a 30-year-old conversation McConnell had with then-Estonian President Lennart Meri during which Meri said, “We are a very little country, and you have made us safe.” McConnell, from his perch on the foreign operations panel of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had included a rider in a spending bill denying Russians aid unless they withdrew their military from Estonia and other Baltic states.
It was unusual, a McConnell aide recalled, because most of their meetings with heads of government were only with one country. However, McConnell wanted to make a point to all the nations formerly in Russia’s sphere of influence and told his staff they were doing the meeting, no questions asked. That address, a top adviser to Stoltenberg told me this summer, was crucial in demonstrating the continued bipartisan commitment to NATO, and it came at a crucial time after Trump had threatened to pull the U.S. out of the alliance unless other countries spent more on defense and shortly after Defense Secretary James Mattis had resigned.in February of last year, stunning Europe, McConnell saw an opening. Now was the time to bring Finland and Sweden, the two Scandinavian holdouts, into NATO.
The major discussion at dinner, McConnell told me, was whether voter sentiment in Scandinavia would shift in the aftermath of the invasion. By May of last year, when McConnell went to Kyiv and then stopped in Helsinki and Stockholm, “public opinion in Sweden and Finland had totally changed,” he said.
Niinistö made clear he didn’t know what to make of Trump’s suggestion then while McConnell, the attendees said, only offered a knowing chuckle as if to say: Welcome to my world. Last year, after the Senate voted with only one dissent to approve Finland’s entry to NATO, McConnell sent the signed roll call sheet to Niinistö.
Or, as another top official in the current government in Helsinki put it when I asked him what worried him most about Ukraine: “The U.S. in one way or another growing tired.” Those ranks include McConnell ally Susan Collins, the Maine senator who’s the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee and accompanied McConnell to Kyiv and beyond last year.
“Because they’ve just been talking to voters,” Hawley said, arguing that the GOP rank-and-file has little appetite for pouring more money and weapons into Ukraine. The polling, much of it dependent on the wording, is more divided in terms of Republican sentiment. Yet there’s clearly significant reluctance at the grassroots, and that opposition is likely to only grow as the war drags on.
Now, though, it was McConnell at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, accompanied by an impressionable group of newly elected Senate Republicans, who opened his remarks with a message as much for them as the Europeans. The reaction from the Europeans was immediate, said Alexander Lambsdorff, who was then a German parliamentarian and has since been named as his country’s ambassador to Russia.The delegation, which included first-term Sens. Katie Britt , Pete Ricketts , Markwayne Mullin and Ted Budd as well as trusted McConnell deputies Joni Ernst and Thom Tillis , then went on to Helsinki and a handful of Middle East capitals.
“In terms of so-called selling it, I thought the best way to do it was to have others because these were people who just faced the voters, heard plenty of arguments to the contrary and needed to hear it from someone else other than just the people who sent them here,” he said. “He’s giving cover to people who still believe that but are getting hammered at home by our populist right,” Sen. John Thune , the second-ranking Senate Republican, told me., a group dedicated to promoting foreign aid alongside defense, he made an emphatic case that hard power goes hand in hand with soft power.
When McConnell attended a private Cotton fundraiser in June, the Arkansas senator concluded their dinner program conversation by cueing up McConnell on an issue “of great importance.” More telling was how much more, and how much more powerfully, the 46-year-old Cotton spoke that evening. Yes, it was his event. It was clear in that moment, though, what started to emerge in the reporting after McConnell’s 20 seconds of silence last month: He’s starting to cede more to his colleagues.
Equally frustrating to the lawmakers is that Biden has not done more to rally popular support for American involvement in the war, to make a compelling public case for why the outcome matters to U.S. interests.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Inside the Biden family-tied accounts at the heart of the GOP 'foreign influence' inquiryRepublican congressional investigators have now detailed in three memos the various Biden-linked accounts they say hauled in over $20 million combined from overseas as the GOP inches toward subpoenaing the family.
Read more »
Tory Lanez Life In L.A. County Jail, Held Out of General PopulationAn inside look at what life is life for Tory Lanez inside Los Angeles County Jail.
Read more »
The Guy Who Blew It for Republicans in OhioA Senate candidate had the gall to accurately describe the GOP’s motive.
Read more »
Christie says no one has given him a loyalty pledge to signThe RNC's loyalty pledge is a hot issue in advance of the first GOP debate.
Read more »