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Senator Mitch McConnell<\/strong> stood on the Senate floor last week on his 83rd birthday to announce that he would not seek an eighth term as Kentucky\u2019s senior senator in 2026. \u201cMy current term in the Senate will be my last,\u201d he muttered in his signature gravelly drawl. The response was tepid. So much so that North Carolina Republican senator Thom Tillis<\/strong> had to request unanimous consent for a 30-second round of applause. About 20 senators, six pages, and a smattering of floor staff slowly rose to their feet to clap, breaking a few seconds early to move onto other matters.<\/p>\n It was a subdued send-off, symbolizing an unlikely fate for the most influential Senate Republican leader of the last half-century, a man who built the modern GOP in his own image\u2014only to find himself abandoned by it in old age. Indeed, the party he so ruthlessly shaped over his four-decade senatorial career has been hijacked by Donald Trump,<\/strong> a man he reportedly personally detests<\/a> but whose political rise he enabled<\/a>. Now, as Trump\u2019s grip on the Republican Party tightens, McConnell is taking his final bow as a relic of a political era\u2014one of quiet plotting and backroom dealmaking\u2014that no longer exists.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Mitch McConnellism\u2019 as a political philosophy is dead,\u201d Matt Jones,<\/strong> a Louisville sportscaster who considered a Senate run against McConnell in 2020, told me.<\/p>\n To be sure, McConnell\u2019s swan song hasn\u2019t been without bite: In a December essay<\/a>, the outgoing senator openly criticized the right\u2019s isolationist rhetoric on foreign policy, and lamented that Trump has \u201ccourted Putin\u201d and \u201ctreated [NATO] allies and alliance commitments erratically and sometimes with hostility.\u201d More recently, he was one of three Senate Republicans to vote against the confirmation of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth<\/strong>\u2014a move that Senator Jack Reed<\/strong> told me he personally found \u201ccourageous.\u201d McConnell was also the only senator to vote against confirming Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard<\/strong> and Health and Human Service Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/strong><\/p>\n Needless to say, it was a strange sight to see McConnell, once the Senate GOP\u2019s ideological lodestar, become the lone holdout in a conference of his own making. Still, \u201che loves the Senate,\u201d Senator John Kennedy,<\/strong> a Louisiana Republican, told me during a hallway interview Tuesday, \u201cand he\u2019s very concerned that we keep the Senate as our founders intended it to be.\u201d<\/p>\n To Trump\u2019s presumptive delight, McConnell did<\/em> join the GOP fold in voting to confirm Kash Patel<\/strong> for a 10-year term as FBI Director. \u201cI hope and expect he will move quickly to reset the Bureau with greater transparency, accountability, and cooperation with Congress,\u201d the senator said in a statement after the vote.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, I asked McConnell to elaborate further on that position. \u201cI think I\u2019m going to continue my habit of not doing press between the Capitol and here,\u201d he laughed. \u201cGood try!\u201d<\/p>\n I expected just as much; McConnell famously avoids hallway interviews with the Capitol press, walking blankly through our questions, offering nothing that can be used in a news story. \u201cHe used to have selective hearing,\u201d Senator John Hoeven,<\/strong> a North Dakota Republican, said of McConnell. \u201cNow his hearing now is just not that good because he\u2019s old. But it used to be fine, it was just selective\u2026. You guys, as reporters, might have noticed that.\u201d<\/p>\n For decades, McConnell was the undisputed architect of Republican power in Washington. He turned obstructionism into an art form, blocking Democratic priorities with cold efficiency. In 2016, he famously refused to grant a hearing to President Barack Obama<\/strong>\u2019s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland,<\/strong> arguing that the late Justice Antonin Scalia\u2019s seat should be filled by the next president because it was an election year. Four years later, McConnell did the exact opposite, ramming through Amy Coney Barrett<\/strong>\u2019s confirmation mere weeks before the 2020 election. It was a duplicitous maneuver with major consequences, securing him a 6-3 conservative majority on the high court, whose makeup likely would have been the inverse if McConnell had abided by Senate precedent.<\/p>\n But the scheme was also peak McConnell, whose influence was never about fiery speeches or ideological grandstanding. Rather, he employed private cunning and an economy of words, rarely speaking unless it served his political ends. \u201cTo Mitch McConnell, communication means giving things away. If he tells people what he is up to, they may be able to use that against him,\u201d said<\/a> New York Times<\/em> reporter Carl Hulse<\/strong> at the beginning of Trump\u2019s first term in 2016.<\/p>\n McConnell himself once acknowledged this strategy. \u201cI was hoping some reporter would ask me a question about anything,\u201d he once joked to Hulse, recalling his early days in the Senate. \u201cNow I spend most of my time smiling sweetly at you guys and walking on by.\u201d<\/p>\n That discipline served him well for some time during the Trump era. But McConnell\u2019s relevance was clearly fading by the 2020 election, the violent aftermath of which offered<\/a> him one of few opportunities to rid the party of Trump for good. In the end, the then Senate majority leader voted against convicting Trump of inciting an insurrection. Meanwhile, his refusal to engage in the performative outrage that defines Trump-era politics became a liability in a party increasingly driven by personality cults and grievance politics. Trump eventually dubbed him \u201cOld Crow,\u201d a moniker McConnell wryly embraced and one that bemused his colleagues. \u201cIt was right after he was called \u2018Old Crow\u2019 and I think I got like an Old Crow bourbon as a gift from Mitch,\u201d Republican senator Lisa Murkowski<\/strong> recounted to me. Still, the insult underscored the president\u2019s growing stranglehold on the GOP as the party slowly slipped through the senator\u2019s fingers.<\/p>\n McConnell\u2019s body has been failing him lately\u2014he\u2019s suffered multiple falls, at times requiring a wheelchair. Last August, he froze at the podium during the weekly GOP leadership press conference, prompting John Barrasso<\/strong> to assist his exit. After he reemerged for questions, I asked<\/a> the then ghostly pale senator whether he had a replacement in mind. McConnell laughed out loud, refused to take any more questions, and walked away with his then heir apparent John Thune<\/a>,<\/strong> now the new majority leader.<\/p>\n But more than his health, it\u2019s McConnell\u2019s political standing that has deteriorated beyond repair. It now belongs to Trump, whose loyalists have taken over the Republican Senate conference and who delights in humiliating the senator whenever possible. Once the most feared man in Washington, McConnell has become an afterthought, unable to stop Trump-aligned candidates from winning primaries and reshaping the GOP in their leader\u2019s image.<\/p>\n When McConnell takes his official exit, a power vacuum will emerge. Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron,<\/strong> a McConnell prot\u00e9g\u00e9 turned Trump loyalist, is already eyeing his seat. What\u2019s left for McConnell in the meantime? A slow farewell tour, another potential slate of contrarian\u2014but inconsequential\u2014votes, maybe a few more sound bites, and a quiet retreat into irrelevance. McConnell, the turtle who outlasted them all, is finally crawling away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n