All Americans should be grateful for Mitch McConnell’s service to Republicans and the nation

Mitch McConnell announced Wednesday that he’ll step down as Senate Republican leader in November after 17 years.

That’s a record for either party, but McConnell will go down in history far more for the excellence of his leadership than its longevity.

US senators have long been known for their oversized egos; wrangling a pack of them, even of the same party, is basically herding cats.

And that’s on top of outsmarting the opposition Democrats, who through McConnell’s entire tenure have been far more unified — not least because the national media and the entire DC culture unite to push the same left-of-center agenda of ever-bigger government and ever-higher federal taxation and spending.

Frankly, Senate GOP leaders in the pre-McConnell years were a sad bunch, either too clubby or too overwhelmed by the job’s challenges — and far too ready to seek “unity” in a way that relentlessly advanced Democrats’ agenda.

McConnell became a hate figure for the left by putting a firm stop to that.

And, yes, he earned whining on the right with his practical attention to the views and needs of all his members, and to the long-term importance of keeping the Senate and the whole government functioning — and his refusal to embrace cockamamie schemes that might win a quick or dramatic victory at the price of destroying the GOP brand.

Not that he was unwilling to fight: In the face of daunting Dem majorities in the early Obama years, in particular, he played a weak hand masterfully to frustrate the president’s radical agenda.

Perhaps his proudest achievement is his successful protection of the third branch of government, the judiciary, from the left’s decades-long drive to colonize it — to turn it into a force that would ram through the progressive agenda with no need for democratic lawmaking.

Dating at least to the 1987 Bork nomination, Democrats have innovated ever-dirtier smears and other low tactics to block strict constitutionalist judicial nominees, and to ram through every progressive possible.

McConnell fought fire with fire — invoking the “Biden rule” (first declared by then-Senate Judiciary chief Joe Biden in the Reagan years) to block President Barack Obama’s bid to place Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court after the death of the great Justice Antonin Scalia, then extending Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s “no filibustering judicial nominees” rule to ease the confirmation of President Donald Trump’s three excellent high-court picks.

And he saved the courts honorably — never stooping to the character assassinations that the left now routinely deploys against Republican high-court nominees.

He also took a principled stance after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, declaring Trump “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day” — while voting against conviction in the Senate for the simple reason that Trump by then was no longer in office, which impeachment clearly requires.

These last 17 years, Mitch McConnell has honorably done more to advance Republican causes, while also preserving the core institutions of our nation’s government, than anyone else in Washington.

His party, and the entire country, should applaud his service.