Follow this authorMarc A. Thiessen's opinions

Then, when Trump took office and nominated Neil M. Gorsuch — a judge of unquestioned qualifications and temperament — Democrats decided to filibuster his nomination. It was a grave miscalculation, and McConnell capitalized, convincing his Republican colleagues that they had no choice but to extend the Democrats’ precedent and eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations. “I argued to my people if this guy can’t get 60 votes then nobody a Republican president nominates is going to get 60 votes,” McConnell told me at the time. “That’s what allowed me to get people who were reluctant and complaining about using the nuclear option four years earlier to do it.”

If Democrats had not overplayed their hand, and had McConnell not skillfully exploited their error, Gorsuch would never have been confirmed — and neither would Brett M. Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett. Conservatives owe the Supreme Court’s 6-3 majority, and all the consequential decisions it has produced, to McConnell.

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While the Supreme Court hears only about 80 cases a year, the federal appeals courts have final say on about 60,000. McConnell’s Republican majority confirmed more than 200 judges to the lower courts during Trump’s term — including 54 circuit-court judges, the most confirmed in a president’s first term in four decades. As President Biden’s former chief of staff Ron Klain complained, those judges “will be deciding the scope of our civil liberties and the shape of civil rights laws in the year 2050 — and beyond.” Amen to that.

McConnell handled policy fights with the same virtuoso acumen. After Trump’s election, McConnell ushered through the first comprehensive tax reform in three decades, and helped repeal the wet blanket of Obama-era regulations that were smothering our economy, helping unleash the prosperity that has many Americans wanting to return Trump to the Oval Office today. Every Trump legislative accomplishment — from passing criminal justice reform, to opportunity zones to rebuild our inner cities, opioid and sex-trafficking legislation, and the Right to Try law — has McConnell’s fingerprints on them.

McConnell broke with Trump when he needed to, however. He refused Trump’s repeated demands to eliminate the legislative filibuster at a time when Republicans controlled the White House, Senate and House — wisely declaring “I will not vandalize this core tradition for short-term gain. … There are no permanent victories in politics. No Republican has any trouble imagining the laundry list of socialist policies that 51 Senate Democrats would happily inflict on Middle America in a filibuster-free Senate.”

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And when Joe Biden won in 2020, McConnell resisted Trump’s push to overturn the election results and brought the Senate back into session after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to certify the electoral college vote........

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