The rolling fallout from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack is putting a renewed spotlight on the differences between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
The two men took opposite tacks this week in response to the Republican National Committee (RNC) censure resolution of Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), marking the latest instance in which they’ve parted ways over the past year.
McConnell and McCarthy have different political considerations — namely the political makeup of their conferences and how they deal with former President Trump — even as they work to accomplish a shared goal: winning back the majority in November.
“Both are really quite strategic thinkers. … They are different personalities, but they are similar in their leadership in that regard,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who served in the House before joining the Senate, told The Hill. “Kevin is really a cheerleader. … Mitch is smart, cunning and calculating.”
The two have opposite public personalities: McConnell is known for his strategic mind and dry humor but also for being closed-lipped even with members of his own caucus about his thinking. Trying to ask McConnell a question around the halls of the Capitol will frequently get reporters radio silence.
McCarthy, meanwhile, thrives on popularity, is known for being talkative, and is closely attuned to what is driving conservative outlets and the party’s base.
The two are at different points in their career: McCarthy, at 57, has spent years climbing the House GOP ladder and is aiming to capture the Speaker’s gavel for the first time if Republicans recapture the House majority after making a failed bid in 2015.
McConnell, who turns 80 this month, has led the Senate GOP caucus as both the majority and minority since 2007. He also set a record in 2018, becoming the longest-serving GOP leader.
The differences between the two leaders and their conferences, with the House closer to Trump, matter less now because Republicans are in the minority but could come into sharper focus in 2023 if they find themselves back in control of Congress.
“When you’re in the majority you’ve got to coordinate your agendas and try and line up votes and everything,” Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said in an interview.
Cramer added, “It’s easier to be united in the minority. In the majority you have much more responsibility.”
The two GOP leaders do coordinate.
They meet regularly when Congress is in session, and a McConnell aide told The Hill that “staff are in frequent communication.” A McCarthy aide, while confirming the regular meetings between the two leaders, noted that there is also a weekly staff meeting.
But even as they keep each other in the loop — and largely avoid publicly wading into each other’s business — their strategies over the past year have split.
McConnell broke with the RNC’s resolution where it described Jan. 6, when a mob of the former president’s supporters attacked the Capitol, as “normal political discourse,” describing the day as a “violent insurrection.”
He also sent a warning to the national committee, backed up by several of his leadership team, that it was their job to support Republicans and shouldn’t be “singling out” members with different opinions.
“That’s not the job of the RNC,” McConnell said.
McCarthy, meanwhile, split his stance, telling CNN that he agreed with McConnell’s characterization of Jan. 6 when applied to people who broke into the Capitol, adding, “I mean, no one would disagree with that.”
But he also defended the RNC, arguing that its use of “legitimate political discourse” was referring to RNC staff subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee, of which Cheney and Kinzinger are the only GOP members.
“The RNC put out their resolution. I think they have a right to do their resolution and what they wanted,” McCarthy added about the RNC censure of two members of his conference.
They’ve had moments of unity: They both opposed a Jan. 6 commission and Build Back Better and teamed up to push the administration for briefings on its withdrawal from Afghanistan, where they were both deeply critical.
But they’ve broken on key policy fights. McConnell encouraged and eventually supported a bipartisan infrastructure deal and helped negotiate a deal late last year on the debt ceiling with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). McCarthy opposed both, though he met with McConnell during the debt fight and warned him against attaching it to a massive defense bill. The plan, which had been under consideration in the Schumer-McConnell talks, was subsequently dropped.
And their biggest point of division is one that shows no signs of going away: Trump, who is flirting with a 2024 presidential run.
McConnell blamed the former president as “practically and morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 attack. He urged his members to oppose efforts to challenge the 2020 election during Congress’s formal count, while McCarthy voted with most of his conference to try to challenge the results in key battleground states.
McCarthy views Trump’s support as crucial to his own political goals and touts his relationship with the former president. McConnell rarely refers to Trump by name and has emerged as one of the former president’s favorite targets, this week turning the president’s “Old Crow” moniker into a joke about bourbon.
Their styles largely reflect their divergent political calculations heading into November: Republicans are confident about their ability to win back the House majority given a flood of House Democratic retirements, Biden’s dismal approval ratings, and a redistricting process the GOP thinks has shored up Republican-leaning and swing districts. Conservatives and Trump-aligned Republicans also make up a larger share of McCarthy’s conference.
McConnell, meanwhile, sees his road to the Senate majority running through states won by Biden in 2020, by holding on to incumbents — mainly Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), whom Trump has vowed to unseat — and keeping a close eye on potentially nasty GOP primary fights. He’s warned he and his allies will step in to avoid past missteps in which a GOP candidate won the primary but lost what should have been a red seat in the general election.
Thune said that while the Senate GOP doesn’t typically weigh in on House Republicans if the party wants to win November, “It’s important that we’re trying to be as unified as possible when it comes to messaging.”
“If we do get the majorities back, then we obviously have to coordinate an agenda,” Thune added.
That coordination could be helped in 2023 because having Biden in the White House would give McConnell and McCarthy someone they could both message against heading into 2024.
But unlike in the minority, where divisions among Republicans have little practical impact, regaining a congressional majority could also spotlight the differences between the two GOP leaders and their conferences because they’ll need to wrangle their members to vote for basic things such as funding the government and a debt ceiling hike that will come due in early 2023.
“I think that changes a lot of things for Kevin. I think his job gets a lot harder. … You no longer have the luxury of just being a ‘no’ vote for the sake of being a ‘no’ vote,” Cramer said.
“Depending on how big the majority is of course, Kevin’s challenge then too is that splinter groups or caucuses within caucus have so much more power,” Cramer added. “When you’re in the majority and you bear the responsibility of governing, they become more of a burr under the saddle of the caucus.”