Mitch McConnell hasn’t yet decided whether or not he will vote to convict Donald Trump at the Senate impeachment trial. He announced yesterday, “…while the press has been full of speculation, I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate.”
This is in keeping with McConnell’s approach to sticky political issues, as described in The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell, the Alec MacGillis book about the senator, which portrays McConnell as a highly skilled negotiator, who often swoops in after lying low as controversies rage and other political actors skirmish.
MacGillis — describing one of the shutdown episodes generated by “archconservatives” aka “self-aggrandizing extremists” in the Republican caucus — quotes former Senator Judd Greg (a McConnell ally) on the Kentucky senator’s approach in that crisis and in other controversies:
The Republican Party, after Trump’s failed insurrection and the two Georgia defeats, is at war with itself. Lots of stuff is going to happen between now and January 20 — and in the following weeks.
McConnell will decide on another day how to vote on impeachment. The stakes are high and McConnell doesn’t always win.
So, the wily senator is watching and waiting as the cards play out. He hopes to have a better read of the hand he holds in a few weeks than he does today.
Or — maybe not. Perhaps McConnell knows how he’ll vote, but he’s psyching out other players at the table. Or misdirecting the media as they offer a play by play. Or grasping for some advantage that may or may not become clear to us for a while.
This much is clear: It is not likely that “the legal arguments” will sway Mitch McConnell nearly as much as political calculations.
Bet on it.
(Poker face? Image from CNBC.)