Trump Wants To Take Over The GOP But McConnell’s Senate Resists
It’s clear that Trump wants to be the center of gravity for the Republican Party. Nearly all Republican candidates support him, or at least refrain from criticizing him. His endorsement is often enough to win a primary race. He has installed his daughter in law as the co-chair of the RNC.
However, there is one bastion of the old guard that has mostly withstood Trump’s attempts to remake the party: the soon-to-be Republican-controlled Senate. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) who has led the Senate Republicans for decades, is the unofficial leader of the old school “establishment GOP” which is arguably no longer the “establishment” but still holds substantial power. McConnell’s faction believes in tax cuts and foreign intervention while Trump represents a turn towards populism. Trump and McConnell have fought over the future direction of the party for the past 8 years, backing different candidates in the primaries.
In the 2022 Senate race in Alaska, McConnell-aligned PACs spent millions of dollars attacking Trump-aligned candidate Kelly Tshibaka who was running against incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican who votes with Democrats about half the time. The Republican base saw this as a betrayal and the Alaska State Republican Party issued a statement condemning McConnell.
After the 2022 Senate elections McConnell blamed “candidate quality” for Republican losses, an oblique way of criticizing Trump for his candidate picks.
In the 2024 election, McConnell did not spend any Republican funds at all in support of Kari Lake, an extreme MAGA Senate candidate in Arizona who lost her race by 2.4 percentage points. However, McConnell spent millions of Republican dollars supporting Larry Hogan, a very moderateRepublican in a doomed Senate race in Maryland which he lost by 10 percentage points.
In the 2024 Utah primary race to fill Mitt Romney’s senate seat, the Trump-backed candidate Trent Staggs lost to Romney ally John Curtis. Utah has historically been less pro-Trump than other red states. Evan McMullin received 21% of the votes in Utah in the 2016 Presidential election.
Senate Republicans just selected John Thune as majority leader over Rick Scott who was Trump’s preferred choice. Thune is a close ally of McConnell. The vote was not close. By secret ballot Thune won 25 votes, another McConnel ally John Cornyn won 15 votes and Rick Scott won just 13 votes.
The reason why the Senate has resisted Trump’s influence is because it was designed to work this way. Senators have 6 year terms because the Founders wanted the Senate to be less influenced by populist sentiment than that which could sway the House of Representatives and the Presidency. The Senators who just won their elections will not be up for re-election until 2030, so there is no way Trump could dislodge them during his term in office.
Moderate Republican Senators such as Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have blocked Trump’s appointees to federal office in the past and they are threatening to block some of his recent cabinet nominees.
Let’s look at how Trump-aligned and McConnell-aligned candidates fared in the 2024 elections. The 2024 Senate results were mediocre for Republicans overall, but they were pretty good for MAGA-aligned politicians. MAGA candidates ran for Senate in five competitive states and won three of them. In four states they faced Democrat incumbents: Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They won three of those races and lost in Wisconsin. The biggest loss for MAGA was in Arizona where super-ultra-MAGA candidate Kari Lake lost her senate race against Ruben Gallego to fill an empty Senate seat. The lesson is that “moderate MAGA” can win competitive seats such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, but super-ultra-MAGA is too much for swing state voters.
McConnell-aligned candidates Mike Rogers (MI) and Sam Brown (NV) both lost their Senate races against Democrat incumbents. In West Virginia eccentric billionaire and popular former governor Jim Justice easily won the race to replace old-school Democrat Joe Manchin. Jim Justice is a wildcard but he will probably be more aligned with Trump than with McConnell.
So the results for the 2024 Senate races are:
MAGA against Democrats: 3 wins, 2 losses
McConnell’s faction against Democrats: 0 wins, 2 losses
MAGA against McConnell’s faction in the primary: 1 win (Jim Banks), 1 loss (Trent Staggs lost to John Curtis)
Wildcard (Jim Justice): 1 win, 0 losses
All other Republicans who won were incumbents.
Since Trump chose JD Vance to be his Vice President, the Ohio governor will appoint a new Senator to serve the rest of Vance’s term. Ohio governor Mike DeWine is a moderate Republican who has clashed with Trump. He will appoint a moderate Republican to fill Vance’s seat.
Incoming Trump-aligned Senator Jim Banks will replace McConnell-aligned Senator Mike Braun. Incoming McConnel-aligned Senator John Curtis will replace McConnell-aligned Senator Mitt Romney.
In sum, if we count Jim Justice as a likely Trump ally, the shift in the balance of power will be MAGA +4, McConnel’s faction +0, Democrats -4.
Trump is gradually remaking the Republican party and his allies are growing their power in the Senate, but the old school faction of Mitch McConnell still holds significant power and for now they still hold Republican leadership positions in the Senate. It remains to be seen how the full transformation of the GOP will play out over the next few years.