THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Mitch McConnell, despite having control of the Senate with like minded friends in the house and Congress, had an "anno horribilis" in his job. People may say Trump did not get any significant legislation passed, but it was Mitch's job to get things through the Senate. So naturally when he failed it was Trump's fault

Everything was in place for this to be Mitch McConnell’s year. He had a Republican Congress and White House for the first time in a decade, and a simple majority of votes was all that was needed to not only confirm major nominees but pass major legislation too.

And certainly, he scored some big wins — first with a Supreme Court confirmation and then by delivering to the White House the first tax reform package in three decades.

But the Kentucky Republican, who entered Congress in 1985, is looking ahead to 2018 with fewer accomplishments to tout than he might have hoped, and a long list of leftover legislative agenda items from 2017 to confront.

McConnell was able to help avert a government shutdown before Christmas, but he couldn’t at any other point in the year advance individual spending bills. Doing so would have averted the current scenario: Come January, party leaders will have to convince members of Congress to agree to a longer-term deal to fund government agencies, and no one has any good idea how it will all come together.

When Congress reconvenes in the new year, McConnell will be looking for how to reauthorize children’s health insurance funding, reform a government surveillance program, provide money for storm-ravaged states and territories and protect more than 800,000 young immigrants from deportation before a March 8 deadline. And in an election year, he will have to straddle a desire to appease the party base while acknowledging the reality that few things might be accomplished without reaching across the aisle — he will, after all, by Jan. 3, have only 51 Republican votes to work with.

In a recent interview with McClatchy from his Capitol Hill office, McConnell said punting on “this potpourri of issues” was not unusual, and he blamed Democrats for using procedural maneuvers to slow down the legislative process across the board.

“Democrats have concluded it’s not in their best interest to pass individual (spending) bills,” McConnell explained. “They like slow-walking everything, rolling it up into one big ball and having a crammed negotiation.”

One major legislative defeat was Congress’ failure to deliver on the Republican promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, resulting in months of ultimately wasted time and effort that could have been used elsewhere. McConnell did see comprehensive tax overhaul legislation over the finish line — but even the tax bill that cuts rates for most Americans is proving to be a hard sell.

When asked why Republicans were finding themselves having to defend massive tax cuts to the American people, McConnell attributed the bill’s 29 percent approval rating to the media’s “unrelentingly negative” coverage. He then pulled out a typed list of talking points to provide examples of how the GOP would overcome bad press and make its case to voters ahead of the midterm elections.

“We’re having a fun time selling this,” said McConnell. “We believe in this, we think it’s the right thing to do for the country, we’re anxious to have this debate.”

McConnell’s friends, colleagues, former associates and political observers agree McConnell had a tough year.

They also share belief that it wasn’t all McConnell’s fault.

“He got a bum rap,” said Rep. Hal Rogers, a fellow Kentucky Republican and a senior appropriator. “He got a lot of undue criticism. After all, he had a two-vote margin in the Senate, which makes things almost impossible. And these are really, really, tough, complicated issues. Plus, we had an unusual president to work with.”

Indeed, many political experts pointed at President Donald Trump when asked about McConnell’s hard year.

Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, said the GOP leader “had to deal with a president who is unlike any president in American history, who was openly critical of him and didn’t follow norms. And McConnell is a creature of norms.”

“With a different Republican president, he might have achieved more,” added Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University who used to work for Democrats in Congress. “The president was constantly interfering, making comments that basically put people in Congress, particularly in the Senate, off message. Whenever the president asserted himself in legislative matters, it had negative consequences for McConnell.”

True the only real achievements Mitch had were the result of changing, distorting or ignoring Senate rules, but really it was all Donald's fault. If he had been a real President Mitch's job would have been 'easy-peasy'.