WASHINGTON — Within 48 hours of the release of a long-awaited immigration and foreign aid bill he had championed, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Republican conference rejected his pitch to support it, knifed the deal and left it for dead.
Just four Republicans voted for it. In the end, even McConnell backtracked and voted against the package that he had helped develop.
It was a jarring moment on Capitol Hill that pointed to a changed landscape: The Kentucky Republican, a one-man power center for more than a decade, is seeing his influence with fellow senators wane as his party continues to transform into the right-wing populist mold of Donald Trump. The former president, who fiercely opposed the border deal and has long pushed fellow Republicans to turn away from McConnell, is cruising to a third consecutive GOP presidential nomination.
“It looks to me, and to most of our members, as if we have no real chance here to make a law,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday, effectively declaring the deal dead after talking to his conference.
The collapse of the package leaves U.S. aid to Ukraine at risk of ending completely. McConnell, who is accustomed to having GOP senators follow his strategic guidance, has been pleading with them for months not to let Russian strongman Vladimir Putin make incursions into Europe, lest it upend the global order the U.S. has led since World War II. Those pleas have fallen on deaf ears with conservative lawmakers and voters, who align with a Trump wing that has turned against giving Ukraine money and weapons to defend itself.
The Senate is still trying to pass a supplemental aid bill by itself that would include aid to Ukraine and Israel, but it’s far from clear that can pass Congress, despite McConnell's support.
“We had 10 of us to vote against him at the start of this Congress. There may be a few more people questioning him,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Wednesday. “I hope a lot of my colleagues are asking themselves: How did we get ourselves in a situation where we’re being blamed for Biden’s open border policy? How could that be possible? The answer is McConnell made that possible.”
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., called McConnell’s moves to reach a border and Ukraine deal a “big tactical error.”
“It was a huge mistake. And I think he’s always cared more about giving money to Ukraine than he has about any other issue,” Paul said of his fellow Kentuckian.
Paul, who holds isolationist foreign policy views, has frequently found himself among a fringe minority of Republicans while McConnell’s positions have commanded the support of most colleagues. Lately, that dynamic has evolved.
“On this issue, he is not aligned with the conservatives either at home in Kentucky or across the nation who don’t think we can send unlimited money,” Paul said.
McConnell rejected claims by his GOP critics that he shouldn’t have engaged in negotiations to pair Ukraine aid with a border and asylum bill, reminding them that it was their idea.
“I followed the instructions of my conference who were insisting that we tackle this in October. It’s actually our side that wanted to tackle the border issue. We started it,” McConnell said. “Things have changed over the last four months.” His office declined to comment further.
'It surprises me'
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said he was shocked that McConnell was not able to get more Republicans to coalesce around the bill.
“He didn’t just bless the deal. He wrote the deal,” Murphy, the lead Democrat in those negotiations, said. “I have a ton of respect for his commitment to Ukraine. I genuinely enjoyed working with his team. They were in the room every single day. But it’s really worrying that a deal that was written and endorsed by the minority leader gets four votes from his caucus.”
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who was elected in 2010 to replace Joe Biden, said that in those nearly 14 years he has never seen a McConnell-backed deal collapse so quickly with the GOP.
“It surprises me,” he said.
But Trump’s hammering of the deal, while he uses immigration as a campaign issue, and his demands that Republicans reject it won the day. On Tuesday, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., a member of McConnell’s leadership team and one of several prospects to replace him as leader, rejected the border bil, saying, “Americans will turn to the upcoming election to end the border crisis.”
