McConnell and Trump Share Blame for Midterm Flop
The pissing match between the former president and top-ranking Senate Republican held the GOP back in 2022 — especially genuine conservatives. It needs to end before 2024.
As the dust settles from the 2022 election, it’s that time again where political junkies of all stripes and affiliations begin to sit down and examine the trends of candidates who overperformed and underperformed, and begin to try and piece together a narrative as to why the results were what they were.
Perhaps the most common narrative that’s emerged is that this election was a disaster for former President Trump, as many of the candidates whom he endorsed for congress and governorships lost their races. Of course, as Trump himself rightfully points out, no one bats a thousand on these things. The issue that I take with Trump’s record in this election is that, even in a lot of the races where he did endorse a winner, said winner was often an establishment hack.
I’m speaking strictly of candidates who received Trump’s endorsement in their primaries, of course, as it’s unfair to criticize any Republican for endorsing a member of their own party once they’ve made it to the general election (except for in Alaska, which we’ll discuss momentarily). The way I see it, Trump’s endorsements came in three categories:
Genuine ideological allies, such as J.D. Vance and Blake Masters.
Candidates who paid him enough lip service, were running against someone who had wronged him, or simply had a personal connection.
Candidates who were going to win anyway, whom Trump endorsed to raise his perceived “batting average,” so to speak.
Like most things President Trump does, I found his list of endorsed candidates over this past election cycle to be a mixed bag. Senators-elect Ted Budd and J.D. Vance will certainly constitute a marked improvement over their respective predecessors, Richard Burr and Rob Portman, both of whom voted in favor of Biden’s $1T “infrastructure” boondoggle earlier this year. Also among the retiring RINOs of 2022 is Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, who is being replaced by the state’s current AG Eric Schmitt, who is undoubtedly one of the best new members of the incoming Congress. Rather than endorse this solid fiscal conservative and fighter against the ESG agenda, though, Trump chose perplexingly to simply endorse “Eric,” when there were multiple “Erics” in the race.
But for every Ted Budd, there was also a Dr. Oz. The Hollywood connection between Trump and Oz was almost certainly the sole thing that earned the TV doctor Trump’s endorsement. While David McCormick, ultimately the primary’s second place finisher, was himself a milquetoast establishment candidate with ties to George W. Bush, Dr. Oz certainly had zero conservative credentials to go off of. Just take a look back through some of his tweets and some highlights from his TV show:
When Christian radio host Kathy Barnette surged late in Pennsylvania’s Republican senate primary polls after conservatives reasonably grew frustrated over their apparent lack of options, Trump had this to say:
“Kathy Barnette will never be able to win the General Election against the Radical Left Democrats. She has many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted, but if she is able to do so, she will have a wonderful future in the Republican Party — and I will be behind her all the way. Dr. Oz is the only one who will be able to easily defeat the Crazed, Lunatic Democrat in Pennsylvania. A vote for anyone else in the Primary is a vote against Victory in the Fall!”
Suffice it to say this statement on electability did not age well. From his cardinal sin of being from New Jersey (as someone married to a native Pennsylvanian, I can confirm they take this crime seriously), to his infamous “crudité” video, Dr. Oz was never the picture of Keystone State electability.
Notice how Trump left the door open in his statement about Barnette just in case she won, though. Down south in deep red Alabama, Trump went a step farther by completely switching his endorsement for U.S. Senate. In a vulgar waste of resources that could have been used toward building a GOP majority, Mitch McConnell dumped $2 million into an effort to defeat Trump’s endorsee, “MAGA Mo” Brooks, a member of the House Freedom Caucus. The beneficiary of McConnell’s money was Katie Britt, a well-entrenched member of the establishment who formerly served as chief of staff for outgoing Senator Richard Shelby, and then as a lobbyist for the Business Council of Alabama, a chamber of commerce-esque group.
After it became clear that McConnell’s efforts in Alabama were working, Trump withdrew his endorsement of Brooks, citing what Brooks had said months earlier at a rally the two held in which Brooks had said to “put [the 2020 election] behind you,” and “move forward.” Brooks, who in the same breath had referred to the events of 2020 as “voter fraud and election theft,” was obviously simply encouraging the crowd to not withdraw from voting and political action, but it eventually became the rationale that Trump was looking for. He later endorsed Katie Britt before the primary, presumably just to count it toward his win column both in the primary and in the general.
Though it may be his only instance of endorsement switching, Alabama’s senate primary was not the only one in which Trump endorsed an establishment candidate who was ahead in polls and fundraising, just for the purpose of padding his numbers. In Nevada’s gubernatorial race, now a flip touted as a major bright spot of the cycle for Republicans, Trump endorsed the eventual winner, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo in the primary. As sheriff, Lombardo implemented a mandate that new hires to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. “RINO Joe” even contributed to the campaign of his Democratic opponent, incumbent governor Steve Sisolak. As a former Nevadan, I don’t call that a bright spot, I call it a stain.
Likewise, Alabama was not the only state where Mitch McConnell wasted millions pushing an establishment RINO for the Senate. In Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, who has capitulated to the Democrats on every major issue for decades, is yet again facing a solid challenger who (like Joe Miller in 2010) would have solidly beaten her in a closed, partisan primary. Murkowski even shared reciprocal endorsements between herself and Alaska’s Democrat congresswoman Mary Peltola. McConnell still chose to spend $5 million dollars on ad buys for her in Alaska’s new ranked choice voting general election, with her main opponent being Trump-backed challenger Kelly Tshibaka, which resulted in the Alaska GOP voting to censure him.
Where, pray tell, did McConnell find the budget for such an extravagant ad buy? By pulling it from New Hampshire, where Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc faced Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassan. This decision by McConnell was an effort to punish a GOP candidate who did not publicly support him remaining as the party’s leader in the Senate. Similarly, McConnell chose to withhold ad money from Blake Masters in Arizona, whom Trump had endorsed in the state’s senate primary.
What was supposed to be a wave election would ultimately be derailed by the dueling massive egos of Trump and McConnell, and just about everyone acknowledges it. Over half a dozen GOP senators are calling to delay leadership votes for their conference, over dissatisfaction with McConnell’s leadership and the election results. On the Trump end, even Kayleigh McEnany is calling for him not to announce his expected 2024 presidential run until after the Georgia runoffs, and seemed to suggest the former president may want to stay out of Georgia in preference of sending Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whose state alone was responsible for half the pickups in House races that have been called as of now.
We owe Donald Trump thanks for many things, from three Supreme Court justices who rank from pretty solid to outright great, to the long-awaited purging of neoconservative chickenhawkery from the party’s mainstream ideology. His presidency far exceeded my expectations, and it was incredible to watch his appointees like FCC chairman Ajit Pai and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos tear down the bloated federal overreach in the sectors they oversaw.
Trump’s political career has outlived its usefulness, though. Since the election has ended, he’s taken several shots at “Ron DeSanctimonious,” who topped the ticket of Republican landslides that reached from one end of Florida to the other, made a strange, rambling statement about Virginia Governor “Young Kin,” and reposted QAnon memes like the one below. For those living in reality, “the storm” refers to a military coup that will supposedly take place, sweeping Trump back into power when we are presented with undeniable evidence that Joe Biden and others committed treason by stealing the 2020 election — something most QAnon believers expected in his announcement yesterday. In fairness to Trump, though, I honestly doubt he is fully aware of the full extent of the conspiracy theories surrounding him. He just knows the Q people like him. It is for this and many other reasons that he has become a distraction from the actual policy issues.
Meanwhile, a holdover from the neocon establishment regime that Trump helped topple, Mitch McConnell’s political career outlived its usefulness ages ago, should you presume that it ever had any at all. McConnell, when his seat is next up in 2026, will be 84 years old. It is high time for him to retire. After all, it’s not as if Kentucky doesn’t have a quality bench of great candidates to potentially replace him. In the meantime, he deserves to get challenged, and beaten, for his post in leadership. This election showed on a grand scale that his concerns lie only with himself, not with the American people.
In 2024, if the GOP wants to win, it must set aside the politics of pettiness and personal vendettas. It must run candidates, for president and all the way down the ballot, who are committed to winning on the issues.
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-Brady