Today Mitch McConnell put the blame on Trump for Republicans being unable to win control of the Senate.
At a press briefing, McConnell said “Our ability to control the primary outcome was quite limited in 2022 because of the support of the former president.”
He blamed ‘candidate quality’ and lumped in this cycle’s losing candidates from Arizona, New Hampshire and Georgia with past candidates like Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle, Todd Akin, and Richard Murdock.
Here’s his comments:
McConnell: "Our ability to control the primary outcome was quite limited in 2022 because of the support of the former president. Hopefully in the next cycle, we'll have quality candidates everywhere." pic.twitter.com/ep0aatPWXl
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 13, 2022
I would note, if my memory serves me, that these candidates that McConnell doesn’t like were conservative candidates. Regardless of Trump, McConnell has never liked strong conservative candidates and has fought against them time and time again. He’d rather a Democrat win that a candidate he doesn’t like. Which is why we can never have a large majority in the Senate, because we always end up with too many gutless compromisers.
You saw in this last election that McConnell didn’t support a number of candidates with his leadership fund because he didn’t like the ‘candidate quality’, and thus we didn’t win control.
McConnell is the biggest problem for Republicans in the Senate. He can blame Trump and ‘canidate quality’ all he wants, but he’s the one supporting terrible candidates like Murkowski. He’s the one who made the promise to always support incumbents, even when they are essentially Democrats.