Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that Trump supporters could “screw up” the midterms for GOP by daring to nominate America First candidates.
Speaking at an event held by the Kentucky Chamber on Tuesday, McConnell discussed that the 2022 midterms “from an atomspheric point of view” should surely be a “perfect storm of problems” for the Democrats, given that they control the House, the Senate, and the presidency.
It therefore seems unlikely that Republicans would be able to “screw up” such an easy electoral target, McConnell noted, but that it was still “actually possible” to do so.
“In the Senate, if you look at where we have to compete in order to get into a majority, there are places that are competitive in the general election,” McConnell noted. “So you can’t nominate somebody who’s just sort of unacceptable to a broader group of people and win.”
The implication from McConnell was that anybody who stands for more firm America First politics would not be able to win in more competitive seats, and that you would need more moderate, mainstream candidates in those positions.
.@LeaderMcConnell on the 2022 midterms: "How could you screw this up? It's actually possible. […] In the Senate, if you look at where we have to compete in order to get into a majority, there are places that are competitive in the general election." https://t.co/pevgKhkPwm pic.twitter.com/eHRBVGRjQF
— The Hill (@thehill) April 13, 2022
As evidence, McConnell said that the GOP had “had that experience in 2010 and 2012,” citing “bizarre” candidates being put forward for the Senate, such as Indiana’s Richard Mourdock in 2012.
Writing for MSNBC’s “Maddowblog,” Steve Benen agreed with McConnell, arguing that the GOP had in the past nominated some “outlandish and unacceptable candidates,” and that “the moral of the story is obvious: The prevailing political winds matter, but so do candidates.”
However, writing in Media Right News, David Caron pointed out that many of the candidates that Benen had cited, including Mourdock, along with Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell and Missouri’s Todd Akin, were “stabbed in the back by RINOs” who refused to endorse them.
The most obvious recent case of a “bizarre” candidate winning was President Trump in 2016, who had been repeatedly dismissed as completely unelectable by RINOs and others. With political appetites widely changing, it is unclear if McConnell’s points will continue to hold water in 2022.
