I suppose one could admire how Mitch McConnell navigated the second impeachment of Donald Trump. He certainly showed some craftiness. But the Kentucky senator’s near-infinite cynicism is no long-term solution to the Republican Party’s difficulties.

Personally convinced of Trump’s guilt, McConnell didn’t feel he could lead his Senate caucus decisively against him. He also knew he couldn’t remain their leader if he took the minority position on conviction. Beyond that, he wanted to protect his members against primary challenges from pro-Trump mobs, so he had to provide some pre-textual excuse for an acquittal vote. But excusing Trump’s behavior threatened to cause money problems for the party, so he made sure to forcefully condemn the ex–president after he’d been acquitted.

I understand why McConnell opted to go this route. It wasn’t a good solution but it gave everyone a little bit of what they wanted and allowed him to live to fight another day.

The biggest drawback of this approach is that it allows Trump to live to fight another day, too. This may be why McConnell almost explicitly recommended that Trump be prosecuted for the January 6 insurrection. I guess we’ll see how that works out.

Sen. Lindsey Graham pointed out another drawback.

Graham griped on “Fox News Sunday” that McConnell’s speech condemning Trump for inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol last month will be used against Republicans as they try to retake control of Congress next year.

“I think Sen. McConnell’s speech, he got a load off his chest, obviously, but unfortunately he put a load on the back of Republicans,” Graham said. “That speech you will see in 2022 campaigns.”

Graham argued that Republican candidates running in battleground states such as Arizona and Georgia will be pressed on McConnell’s speech rebuking Trump, which would also place the burden on GOP incumbents to answer the question of whether they will support McConnell in the future.

In one sense, this is an unavoidable problem. Going forward, Republican candidates for office will have to say whether they stand with Trump or Trump’s accusers within the party. Senate candidates will, as Graham noted, have to state whether they, if elected, will support McConnell as the caucus leader.

But this would have even more true if McConnell had voted to convict Trump. What McConnell’s banking on is that GOP base opinion will move against Trump over time, and he’s probably correct to make that bet. But it’s exactly for this reason that the vote to acquit Trump will become an albatross for a lot of Republicans with the general electorate, and made much harder to defend by McConnell’s insistence that Trump was guilty and his strong suggestion that he should be prosecuted.

In a separate piece, I will explore the wider significance of McConnell’s condemnation and the overall trial. Here, I just want to say that McConnell is clever but he’s no magician. Far from killing off Trumpism, he kept its protagonist alive but wounded and thirty for revenge. He now will have to battle to the death to win this argument, and he won’t have many allies.