It’s Time For Mitch To Go
If the GOP wants to win again, they’ll reject McConnell and find younger leadership that is ready to build a new party to serve the middle class, not the ruling class.
By Chris Buskirk
January 7, 2021
Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who currently holds what I suppose we now call the Office of the Outgoing Senate Majority Leader, has to go. He’s a man unsuited for the times. The results prove it.
It is McConnell who has been the architect of Republican defeat in the Senate. Heading into the 2016 election, there were 54 Republican senators. After the election there were 52. Then, in 2018, McConnell backed the disastrous candidacy of Martha McSally for an open seat in Arizona. It was McConnell who picked her and crowded out other viable candidates. That year McSally lost by 2.4 percentage points to Kyrsten Sinema while, at the same time, Republican Doug Ducey cruised to a nearly 15-point win as Arizona’s governor.
Voters didn’t reject Republicans as such; they rejected McSally. McConnell then lobbied for McSally to be appointed to the seat vacated by John McCain, setting up another McSally defeat at the hands of Mark Kelly in November. Again, she trailed the Republican at the top of ticket, underperforming Donald Trump. And once again, it was McConnell’s doing. In Arizona he helped engineer the loss of two Republican senate seats in two years by handpicking a candidate Arizonans didn’t want.
He finished the job in 2020 with a loss in Colorado, an admittedly tough race on unfavorable terrain. But it was the run-off elections in Georgia that sealed the deal. There, McConnell selected Kelly Loeffler over elected Republicans like U.S. Representative Doug Collins for appointment to the seat held by Johnny Isakson, who resigned for health reasons. Why? McConnell never explained his rationale publicly but it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that he thought he was being clever and wagered that female candidates would get female votes that a male candidate wouldn’t get. Plus, Loeffler is very wealthy and pledged to put at least $20 million of her own money into the campaign.
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