Who Will You Root For In The Coming Battle Between McConnell & Vance?
When McCarthy was deposed as Speaker, he quit Congress to concentrate on getting revenge against his enemies, an endeavor that didn’t yield much in terms of results. When Pelsoi was nudged out of leadership, she stayed on and maintained a tremendous amount of positive influence, in some regards, more so than her successor. Next up: Mitch McConnell who is “voluntarily” stepping down as Senate GOP leader. He’ll be doing so as the longest serving Senate party leader in history, having been elected to the post by his colleagues in 2007.
We’ll never know if he could have been elected leader again but we will soon see what kind of influence he’ll be able to maintain as just a plain old Kentucky senator, a post he was first elected to in 1984. He and I share a birthday but, at 82, he’s got 6 years on me. Everyday gets a little harder— and I’m retired; I can only imagine how tough the stress and pressure is on McConnell, who appears to be in bad health.
He and his wife used their jobs to become very wealthy. In 2018, OpenSecrets estimated his net worth was north of $34 million and Yahoo Finance estimated that he and his wife could be worth over $50 million today. So why is he staying on? That’s a question for a psychiatrist. But he says his top priority for the remaining 2 years of his term will be to push back against the Trump-MAGA-Putin foreign policy doctrine that has gained a strong foothold among Senate Republicans, which he says reminds him of the [conservative] isolationists who enabled the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
The worst of the lot were:
William Borah (R-ID)
Gerald Nye (R-ND)
Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI)
Burton Wheeler (D-MT)
Robert Taft (R-OH)
Henrik Shipstead (R-MN)
There were several progressives who backed the conservative isolationists as well— George Norris (R-NE), Bennett Champ Clark (D-MO) and Robert La Follette Jr (R-WI).
Back in May, Andrew Desiderio reported that McConnell “isn’t finished trying to blunt what he sees as a dangerous foreign policy doctrine taking hold in the Republican Party under Donald Trump. McConnell took to the Senate floor Thursday to deliver a forceful rebuke of members of his own party who have fawned over Orbán— though without mentioning Trump by name, of course… But McConnell pleaded with pro-Orbán conservatives in the GOP to cut it out, citing Orbán’s open hostility to the Western alliance and his deference to U.S. adversaries like China, Russia and Iran. ‘This isn’t where America should be taking our foreign policy cues,’ McConnell said. ‘I didn’t think conservatives had any time for those who suck up to Iran.’”
The longtime Hungarian leader has won fans in the American right for challenging European governments’ embrace of progressive causes and championing right-wing culture war issues. Trump and many of his allies have hailed Orbán’s government as a model.
McConnell declared that Orbán is undermining Western security by deepening Hungary’s ties with China, cozying up to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and seeking to “legitimize” the Iranian government with trade missions.
McConnell also called out the Republicans who have justified their opposition to Ukraine aid by emphasizing China as the bigger threat while at the same time aligning with an autocrat in Orbán, who just rolled out the “red carpet” for China’s Xi Jinping.
More from McConnell:
“From across the Atlantic, there’s good reason to appreciate a European government that’s willing to question EU orthodoxy…
“But here in Washington, we’re obliged to evaluate whether allies and partners share our interests, not just our values.”
McConnell is riding high after he steamrolled Trump-aligned Republicans in helping push through $60 billion in new Ukraine funding. But McConnell’s influence within the Senate GOP Conference has waned as Trump allies have replaced many of his longtime colleagues. McConnell isn’t seeking another term as GOP leader. McConnell hasn’t said whether he’s running again in 2026.
McConnell’s remarks were significant as he effectively opened a new rift with the Trump-aligned faction of his party, which has grown close with Orbán and his political operation over the years.
Trump endorsed Orbán ahead of his 2022 reelection bid. CPAC has expanded its conferences to include Budapest. And in March, the Heritage Foundation— long a touchstone for conservatives— hosted Orbán.
In the past year alone, Orbán has overseen a strict crackdown on democratic norms including freedom of the press and the independent judiciary, blocked NATO approval for Finland and Sweden to extract unrelated concessions and developed closer ties with China.
McConnell noted that this includes giving Beijing “sweeping law enforcement authorities to hunt dissidents on Hungarian soil.” Hungary has also allowed Chinese telecom giant Huawei to operate in the country, including as part of its 5G expansion. Huawei has been banned in the United States over cyber espionage concerns.
The Senate GOP leader said Orbán’s posture “should raise red flags for anyone seriously concerned about strategic competition with China.”
Orbán has invited plenty of criticism from Republican lawmakers over the years.
Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sought to block weapons sales to Hungary when Orbán was holding up Finland and Sweden’s NATO accession.
Risch told us that Orbán’s government is “bad and getting worse.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a close Trump ally, said Hungary will be “isolated” economically and geopolitically for its decision to green-light Huawei.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who was snubbed by Orbán when he and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) visited Budapest in February, believes McConnell is “looking ahead to the next supplemental” funding bill— whether that’s for Ukraine, Taiwan or another ally.
“He’s trying to send a message to our NATO allies— you’re either with us or you’re not,” Tillis said, lamenting “how far [Orbán] has fallen from his commitments to democracy” in the 1990s.
The Putin-wing of the GOP has still been consistently singing Orban’s praises, foremost among them Trump’s weirdo running mate JD Vance plus Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Josh Hawley (R-MO). Last February, long before Peter Thiel bought Vance the slot on the national ticket, Rod Dreher reported that at the Munch Security Summit, Vance “was the skunk at the garden party” with his pro-Putin perspective on the Ukraine invasion. Here’s some of Dreher’s interview with the weirdo:
You are one of the U.S. Senate’s leading skeptics of further aid to Ukraine. Does the Munich Security Conference feel like hostile territory?
I certainly feel like I’m in a hostile territory, I think there is a very broad consensus that the West should be funneling as many resources and weapons to create as possible. And I feel like I’m the only guy sort of shouting in the wilderness saying, ‘What’s the strategy here? What’s the endgame? How do you get out of this conflict without completely destroying the country of Ukraine— demographically, infrastructurally, economically?”
And unfortunately, I think that the participants in the conference are, by and large, so wrapped up in an anti-Putin mindset, that they can’t think rationally about the strategy and the conflict. It’s fine to not like Putin, I don’t like Putin. But that’s not a foreign policy vision.
How do your foreign policy views differ from the Atlantic consensus?
Well, I think I’m just much less moralistic about these things. I approach these questions by asking myself, “What is in America’s national interest?” And I’m much less interested in what makes people feel good, or allows them to beat their chests to declare moral superiority. I’m much more interested in identifying what’s in the best interest of the country.
There are obvious ways in which our interests conflict with Vladimir Putin’s. There are ways in which we are, I think, accelerating the development of his relationship with China, which is very much not in our best interest. And so, if I look at this conflict, I’m not just asking for an end game for Ukraine; I’m asking why are we making it more likely that Vladimir Putin aligns himself with Communist China, when we should be trying really hard not to push any country into the arms of Beijing. We are damaging our own national interest because it feels good, I guess, to hate Putin.
I think a second difference is that I’m extremely interested in questions of hard power. I don’t think that most international decisions, most foreign policy decisions, are driven by anything other than national self-interest. And so, I’m less interested in how many millions or billions of dollars Germany gives to Ukraine. I’m much more interested how many artillery shells they’re donating, and is Germany’s capacity to produce the weapons of war in the future? I think there’s a real blind spot in the West when it comes to the actual machinery of warfare. We are way too focused on financial commitments, and way to uncaring about things like manufacturing power.
There’s a third difference. I think that there is a real desire, especially among people who are older than fifty, to dwell in the glory years of American foreign policy. You know, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 1990s, when America was the true global hegemon. In that world, you really didn’t have to think about scarcity in foreign affairs. America could do everything, because it was so much more powerful than any other country.
Those days are over. We live in an increasingly multipolar world. China is a real economic and military competitor. In that world, America can’t just impose its will, as if it didn’t face scarcity concerns. It has to make trade-offs, and has to focus. Unlike much of the foreign policy establishment, I believe we should be much more focused as a country on East Asia, much less focused on Europe.
…You recently said on the Senate floor that America needs to be focused more on its own problems. What do you mean by that?
Advocates of aggressive American foreign policy fundamentally mistake cause and effect. They say that America is strong, because our foreign policy resolve is strong., and because we aggressively push American ideals out to the rest of the world. The reality is that we are able to push America’s ideals out to the world when we have a strong core at home.
The Americans who fought in World War II were incredibly brave and incredibly competent. The reason America won World War II is because we were the arsenal of democracy. Our industrial economy was booming, and we were able to send troops all over the world, armed with the best equipment and the best weapons, and still have a functioning economy at home. I am not an isolationist. America should have a leading role in the world. We really are the indispensable power. But to be the indispensable power, we actually have to be powerful. To be powerful, we have to take care of our problems at home— and right now, America has some extraordinarily pressing problems.
Such as?
Well, I’d say these are problems that a lot of European countries face as well. We have a terrible migration crisis in the United States. Probably ten percent of our population is illegal aliens, and another 15 percent are in an irregular situation with the law, in one form or another. It takes a lot of work to assimilate such a large number of people into your society, and to do it carefully, to ensure that it doesn’t disrupt health services, education services, and so forth. Not to mention the amount of human trafficking, drug trafficking, and sex trafficking that happens because of the American southern border with Mexico. That’s number one.
Number two, we have a massive demographic problem the United States of America. We’re an aging country. We were the last western country that had healthy demographics, even 15 years ago, but it’s now fallen off a cliff. We have rising suicide rates, especially among our young people. Life expectancy has fallen too. In the Kentucky county where my family from, the life expectancy rate is 67 years old. That’s comparable to a lot of Third World countries today.
And oh, by the way, we de-industrialized our entire economy over a thirty-year period. I think all of these problems need to be addressed before we can meaningfully play a leading role in the 21st century.
…What do you think Trump got wrong in his first term? I suppose this is a way of asking what you think he needs to do differently if he gets a second one.
The single biggest problem with the first Trump administration was personnel. Think about this from Trump’s perspective as an outsider to politics. He comes into the Oval Office, he has no pre-existing political network to hire from. There were a lot of people in the administration that were very solid, but there were a few people that were absolutely disastrous. John Bolton, the neocon-in-chief, should have been nowhere near the Trump White House. Jeff Sessions was a great senator from Alabama, but should not have been the Attorney General. And I think there were sort of some hiring decisions that I think were based on Trump not having a network to hire from, people who knew Washington, D.C. And I think that would be much different in a second term.
…European Parliament elections are coming up in June. The populist Right parties are hoping for a really big showing. What would you like to see happen politically in Europe?
Well, aside from populist victories, I would really like to see European elites actually listen to their people for a change. What was the takeaway from Brexit? It’s that British voters wanted more control over their immigration system. But what did they get? They got more immigration, with less control— from a Tory government! [Giorgia] Meloni’s victory in Italy was very much a rejection of the immigration policies in Brussels. And yet, she’s been a complete catastrophe when it comes to actually reducing migration to Italy.
The AfD [Alternative for Germany] is doing well was purely because there’s a rising resistance to mass migration in Germany.
You hear European elites and American elites talking in frightened tones about threats to democracy. Isn’t it a greater threat to democracy if people keep voting for less migration, but don’t get it? I’d really, really like to see the leadership respond to what European voters are clearly crying out for. And one of the ways for that to happen, is you just keep on making the message louder and louder. In the context of these coming elections, I want to see the people who are advocating for national sovereignty and foreign policy realism dominate as much as they can.
What would a second Trump term mean for Europe?
I can’t speak for Donald Trump, but I think there would be a very strong desire for the Europeans to take a much more self-sufficient role on defense. That means sufficient manpower to defend their sovereignty, but also sufficient manufacturing capacity to produce the weapons necessary to do so for a longer-term war. There’s this really weird thing that happens in Europe, where, on the one hand, we’re told that Vladimir Putin is an existential threat to Europe. But on the other hand, you have to drag the Europeans to spend 30 percent less of their GDP on defense than the United States spends of its GDP on defense. If Russia really an existential threat, then we shouldn’t have to beg and plead to get you to spend what you are supposed to. So I think the message of the Trump administration to Europe is going to be: you need to pay your bills, and you need to step up your defense.
…Orbán is the first major conservative leader I’ve ever seen who refuses to accept the status quo that says the Left owns the media and the universities. The Left doesn’t even recognize how destructive its own ideological hegemony is. It gets completely bent out of shape when anybody questions it.
I think it’s that’s why Orbán is so effective. You know, the, the late great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that the great conservative insight is that politics is downstream from culture, and the great liberal insight is that culture can be affected by politics. In some ways, I think Orbán is taking an American liberal insight and using it for conservative purposes. And whether it’s the incentives that you put into place, funding decisions that are made, and the curricula that are developed, you really can use politics to influence culture. And we should be doing more of that on the American Right.
McConnell or Vance? I support neither. Both are major threats to the entire planet.