By Niels Lesniewski and Meredith Dake and JM Rieger

In an exclusive interview with CQ Roll Call on Dec. 5, incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had high praise for the incoming class of majority-makers. “I always think there is sort of two kinds of people in politics: those that want to make a point and those that want to make a difference,” McConnell said. “And I think we’ve just added 12 new members to the ‘make a difference’ caucus. And I think we, you know, have some occasional differences over tactics, but I think we are gonna have a broad support within our conference for right-of-center progress.”