Mitch McConnell Once Again Brings Up ‘Candidate Quality’ in 2022 Senate Races
“Look at Arizona, look at New Hampshire and a challenging situation in Georgia as well.”
This week, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell raised the issue of “candidate quality” in the Senate races of the 2022 midterms, a point he made once over the summer.
He suggested that in these competitive races, the choice of candidates was to blame for GOP losses. This was obviously supposed to be a dig at Trump as well, and the media ran with it.
The Hill reports:
McConnell blames Trump for ‘candidate quality’ issues in midterms
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday blamed the power former President Trump exerted in GOP primaries for the “candidate quality” issues his party struggled with in key races.
Speaking to reporters a week after Republicans lost the Senate runoff in Georgia, which expanded the Senate Democratic majority to 51 seats, McConnell said his party was hampered by weak candidates in several battleground states.
“I never said there was a red wave. I said we had a bunch of close races,” McConnell told reporters, citing the caution flags he raised in August when some Republicans were predicting big GOP gains in Congress.
“We ended up having a candidate quality [issue],” McConnell said. “Look at Arizona, look at New Hampshire and a challenging situation in Georgia as well.”
Watch the video below:
This is such a cop-out. No one on the right wants to hear about candidate quality as they watch Democrats win with candidates like John Fetterman and Raphael Warnock. To some people, it looks like the GOP establishment threw the Senate to have a reason to get rid of Trump.
Back in August, when McConnell first made this point, Mollie Hemingway responded with a column in The Federalist:
Come On, Mitch McConnell, Republicans Need You To Step Up And Lead
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked yesterday about Republican prospects for the November elections.
“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different, they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” McConnell replied.
The media and others on the left were of course thrilled with the Republican leader’s “notable quotable” disparagement of Republican candidates and the voters who chose them, which somehow came off even worse on video.
What was McConnell thinking? What in the world was he thinking?…
Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, J.D. Vance, and Blake Masters are successful and impressive people in a variety of careers. Even the more traditional politicians running for re-election — Ron Johnson and Marco Rubio — are among the better senators in office. Adam Laxalt, running against an incumbent Nevada Democrat, is a highly decorated former Naval officer and Iraq War veteran. He was an incredibly successful attorney general in Nevada.
These are not bad candidates!
You know what matters more than candidate quality? Adapting to new voting procedures, something the Republicans have yet to pick up on. They had better learn that and fast.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
“Look at Arizona?” Damn straight Turtle needs to look at Arizona. You don’t get better “candidate quality” than Kari Lake, especially in contrast to Katie “Basement” Hobbs. Look hard, you failure, to learn what YOU did wrong.
But he couldn’t control Kari Lake because she’s an actual conservative.
Exactly. McConnell doesn’t want folks like Blake Masters in the Senate b/c they won’t necessarily tow the establishment line.
McConnell needs to look in a mirror.
What fer? There’s no quality to see there.
Exactly. It’s the quality of alleged party “leaders” that made the difference here.
Nothing but Kentucky Fried Chicken S**t.
Even worse, not only did democrats literally field brain damaged and deceased candidates, but the worthless garbage that was actually breathing didn’t even bother to campaign for the most part. It’s about harvesting votes and this clod McConnell is pretending not to understand that. And in addition, is capitulating in the senate to allow the democrat policy agenda to go forward and undermine the new House before it starts. As if the republican elector needed to be more demoralized. Like the IRS expansion, amnesty, the electoral count act? I;m sure he’ll let them push it all through in the lame duck. So, what is the House victory worth now? A lot less.
Karri Lake literally told John McCain voters to vote for her opponent. That would have been political malpractice in Utah or South Carolina let alone in a swing state.
She was better than Blake Masters (the extremely low quality candidate McConnell was actually talking about) which really isn’t saying much.
In a swing state that voted Biden we ran somebody who’s commercials all could be summarized as
“I love Trump, remember Trump, I love him and he supports this therefore I support this”
In 2022, where are the John McCain voters in Utah or in South Carolina? You’d have trouble finding them with a microscope.
In Arizona, the McCainites aren’t going to support actual Republicans.
Meanwhile, it turns out that organizations affiliated with the Democrats put money into Jamie Herrera Beutler’s primary campaign in Washington state. On account of her being OK, because she’d voted to impeach Trump.
If your aim is to get Democrats in power and keep them in power, you might as well come out and say so.
1. Democrats aired adds intended to help Joe Kent in primary ostensibly attacking him. This was something some Democrats (i.e. The Guardian for example) noticed and criticized. Joe Kent however LOST that district. Let me repeat the result of your work was LOSING a congressional seat. Great job chief, forgive me for not wanting you to force Joe Biden to retreat into a second term while having his senate majority receded to 60. The result of that primary which you are proud to bring up was you gave Democrats another congressional seat. That is called LOSING, and yes you and Trump are responsible for that.
2. Yes deliberately throwing votes away on a point of pride is political malpractice.
3. Optics matter. Telling people who supported what is perceived as a centrist I don’t want your vote….there is no way that comes across positively and yes it did come across negatively.
4. Throwing support away because you don’t think the election is losable is as stupid a strategy as you could get. Just ask people who have done that such as Hillary Clinton.
5. The best way to keep Democrats in power is to make sure they are elected. The best way to do that is to cling to candidates like Blake Masters.
Does it much matter if you put spineless RINO garbage that will bend over for the communists without prompting? May as well just vote for the communist, that’s what you’ll get anyhow in your world.
Alas, Yertle the Turtle knew *exactly* what he was doing.
McConnell is a corrupt rat of titanic prorportions. His presence is the canary in the coal mine for GOP corruption.
CAnDidAte qUalItY people!! 🤬 ignore the “CAnDidAte qUalItY” conservatives because they are not serious conservatives.
What these kinds of conservatives mean when they bang on about “CAnDidAte qUalItY” is that people should only vote for candidates approved by Democrats and the Democrat media.
The CAnDidAte qUalItY conservatives should do us all a favour and just officially become Democrats instead of being Democrat bitches.
Exactly. By “quality candidate,” he means one who will play brownnoser to the establishment.
One who is from the establishment, will vote establishment and die establishment. Outsiders need not apply.
It is the quality of the vote fraud that made the real difference.
You hit the nail on the head.
Funny that Democrats spent MILLIONS of dollars HELPING your low quality candidates win the Republican primaries. It is as if they agree with you that they want to face bad candidates.
We need more high quality candidates like Brian Kemp and less low quality candidates like Blake Masters or Bolduc.
What candidate quality people understand is winning is important. It is one thing to sacrifice an election on principle, it is another to sacrifice it for a prince.
We took candidates out of the proverbial homeless shelter and got predictable results.
Mitch McConnell was 100% vindicated by the election results.
Instead of Blake Masters campaigning on “MUH LOVE FOR TRUMP” we could have had the governor campaigning on social and economic issues.
See above about where Democrats put their money.
Mitch McConnell doesn’t mind whether Democrats stay in power, as long as he gets to control the Republican party.
Since you won’t get control of the Republican party in return for covering for Mitch, what outcome are you expecting?
Democrats spent money to help Trump candidates over the line in the primaries for 2022 yes those candidates were atrocious and it was obvious which is why Democrats wanted to face those candidates.
It was Trump who caused the 2022 catastrophe and it was on behalf of his ego.
If we had listened to Mitch McConnell and say ran the governor of Arizona campaigning on social and economic issues instead of Blake Masters campaigning on Trump we would have won Arizona.
That is called winning.
What we did was Blake Masters campaigning on Trump. That is called losing.
Do you remember the last time Democrats backed the worst possible Republican candidate so they would have an easy time beating him?
It was 2016, it was Trump, and he cleaned their clocks.
This is no sure-fire strategy. It can boomerang big-time.
That’s what happens when Democrats drink their own Kool-Aid.
Poor Mitch. Republican primary voters keep disappointing him so much. I guess we must do better.
Bad carpenters blame the tools. Bad drivers blame the car. Democrats blame guns. Bad politicians blame the media, dark money … everything but themselves.
We lost thanks to Trump McConnell was 100% right.
How about disappointing yourself? We got democrats re-elected from Arizona to New Hampshire it was an utter disgrace.
Was it a disgrace from your point of view?
Yes it was a disgrace.
We donated an easy to win set of elections to Democrats to satisfy Trump’s ego.
People who think Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz were good candidates live in one of those states where they’ve decriminalized psychedelics – not GA or PA. Oz: abortion is between a woman, her doctor, and a local politician. LMAO, what was he thinking? Just because he sold snake oil on TV doesn’t mean he can sell being a politician. And Walker, oy. Ban abortion, except for my ex girlfriends.
Hard to believe people are still shilling for the guy who wants to repeal the constitution.
Was Oz better than Fetterwoman?
Don’t be silly. We are not dealing with facts on this thread.
Here is what Fetterman had
1. Corporate media
2. Corporate America
3. Academia helping him
4. Help for his narratives from government sources
5. BIG TECH
6. The entertainment industry assisting him
To overcome that even with a bad candidate you need a good candidate. Sorry but your burying your head in the sand to Democrat advantages doesn’t make them disappear (by the way if you want to burry your head to those existing when it is convenient for you stop pretending to care about those).
I agree about Oz. Never understood why PA couldn’t find a better choice than a TV Doc from NJ but they also ran Doug Mastriano for Gov so it wasn’t a banner election cycle for Statewide office in PA.
The takeaway seems to be move to closed primary elections with party voter registration required by Jan 1 of the election year. That would help mitigate shenanigans by folks who vote in another political party primary to interfere and try to select a weaker or less electable candidate for the general election contest.
Oz may have been a poor candidate, but against a practically braindead opponent, the only way he should have lost is if he had died before election day.
So you believe death would have been a disqualifier? We already have evidence to the contrary. 🙂
You’re right, of course.
For technical reasons, even if he had died, he still would have been eligible. In a state with a Republican governor, or a constitutional mandate that the replacement appointee need be from the same party, death typically doesn’t present that much of a problem.
So even if he were dead, he still shouldn’t have lost to Fetterman.
So you are saying PA chose a braindead candidate over Oz? lol.
The real problem is that primaries are driven by partisans, while general elections are driven by independents. Independents stayed home, because voting for either was like choosing to shoot themselves in the left vs right kneecap.
Neither party has learned this lesson yet. The first party that does will win elections in a landslide.
I guess Independents loved Fetterman.
“”The real problem is that primaries are driven by partisans””
That’s a feature, not a bug.
What about
1. Big tech
2. Corporate media
3. Academia
4. Hollywood
Republican candidates are running against so many institutions it isn’t funny, what is laughable stupid and self defeating is pretending otherwise
Mehmet Oz had a much bigger opponent than Fetterman which is why he lost (and no that opponent was not fraud).
Maybe Republicans shouldn’t bother to run then.
Or maybe we should get high quality candidates instead of raiding the proverbial homeless shelter. We need more Brian Kemps and fewer Blake Masters.
Too bad President Trump endorsed Mitch for reelection.
Being right across the river in OH, I was praying for Mitch’s opponent to win. Everyone in the OH, KY, IN tristate area have seen Mitch’s horrible, self-serving shenanigans up close and personal.
Congratulation on rooting for a Democrat in order to satisfy a figment of your imagination.
Don’t be a contrarian. You have to go along to get along.
McConnell is mostly full of crap on this theme of candidate quality. Yes we do need to fully vet the candidates before and during the primary. We must understand that choosing a candidate with too many negatives or too much baggage will make it harder to get them elected. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t choose them, just accept the reality that it will be a higher hill to climb.
Sure there have been some past candidates that were too ‘out there’. Christine O’Donnell who had to spend her Senate campaign explaining that she wasn’t a witch but had only dabbled in witchcraft and had a date on a ‘satanic alter’. Todd Akin and his claim that when women were victimized by ‘legitimate rape’ the female body had a natural way to automatically shut down the pregnancy by itself.
None of the candidates in the races McConnell mentions meet that definition of bad or too weirdo candidate. Lake and Masters in AZ, Boldoc in NH and Walker in GA were quality candidates. They weren’t perfect but they weren’t weirdos or extremists either.
McConnell should explain why his preferred candidates in GA back in 2020 couldn’t get over the hump. Loeffler was a horrible candidate and was 100% a McConnell establishing backed creation. David Perdue was also a McConnell establishment candidate tarred by allegations of STOCK act violations. He was an establishment hack who rode the coattails of his Cousin Gov Sonny Perdue into politics after his career as a management consultant and executive who closed down US textile mills and outsourced operations to China.
All of the candidates you mention meet that standard and then some.
1. Bolduc-His campaign was muh 2020 stolen. In a state Trump lost in a landslide. If you campaign on lies you risk total elimination at the polls. There was no indication NH was up for a stop the steal candidate
2. Blake Masters made his campaign “remember Trump I love Trump, I am Trump’s warrior and Trump supports this so I support this”-Guess what? Trump lost Arizona
3. Walker-Brian Kemp easily won in the same cycle. Walker was a low quality candidate. He had celebrity decades ago in Georgia but had a lot of easy to discover baggage.
As far as the American public is concerned yes if you are a stop the steal candidate you are an extremist. The stop the steal candidates Trump put into races to replace Republican congressional incumbents all lost their election bids switching districts like Grand Rapids from R to D.
In 2020 TRUMP was the reason we lost two Georgia senate seats.
You can’t tell someone your vote doesn’t count without them also hearing so don’t vote.
Trump even had people like Sydney Powell over to the White House, told everyone he was considering making her a special prosecutor, informed Georgian crowds “there is no way I lost Georgia”. Telling someone their vote doesn’t count is a great way to keep them from voting in any election.
It isn’t just that he negotiated in bad faith during the (completely uncalled for) covid relief package, which was frankly being called for as a way for Trump to play a role not out of any need. He effectively helped Democrats buy votes.
Danny,
Boldoc ran at 45% in ’22 v Trump’s 46% in 2020. That’s not evidence of a whacko being wholly rejected as an irreparably flawed candidate. Walker was within a singe % on election day. Masters and Lake ran good races and were very competitive.
Especially so given the internal, under the hood divisions within the center/right players in AZ. The remnant of the McCain machine, libertarians, populists and Trumpers were all backstabbing and each other. Lots of bad blood in AZ that played a role.
Add in the flawed strategy of relying upon the in person election day voting instead of more fully embracing the ballot collection methods allowed under AZ law. The shenanigans on election day with inoperable machines absolutely had an impact on their races, the only question is how much.
Not every candidate who lost was a Doug Mastriano and you must admit that if you want to be taken seriously. Just as you must admit that Loeffler in GA was entirely an establishment creation. Her appointment to the vacant Senate seat should have gone to Doug Collins but McConnell prevailed upon Kemp to choose Loeffler.
I agree they weren’t the full Doug Mastriano who I think was in a class by himself bad candidate.
I also agree that the are other issues especially non-political ones like deciding not to build their own machine to counter the Democrat one that did a lot of damage to them (perhaps the only thing California Republicans have to teach us about winning).
As you pointed out Trump lost New Hampshire by a not inconsiderable margin. Stop the steal however means you will cap yourself at Trump’s margin as a best case scenario so while Bolduc didn’t lose many of his potential voters which is the problem with his candidacy.
Walker was within a percentage point. What that shows is that a candidate who could have effectively leveraged Warnock’s domestic abuse, and didn’t have abortion skeletons in the closet and other issues would have won. A lot of Walker problems could have been overcome with much higher competence by starting out running for a much easier to attain position and running near the top after getting some experience at it. However Walker chose a very unforgiving race where every mistake or missed opportunity would be the difference between victory and defeat. Brian Kemp won easily which is significant because it shows Warnock’s victory was not inevitable.
Now with Blake Masters if the only thing to an election was the debate; voting started entirely after the debate and other things like campaign adds didn’t exist he would have been a great candidate and would have won easily. Unfortunately he ran as the Trump man in his conventional campaign which is unfortunate. I would agree he had a lot to overcome but his campaign was just not good. He ran as Trump’s man in a state Trump did not win which is just stupid. For perspective Democrats lost a NC senate seat campaigning as Obama’s man 2014 (in other words same strategy same result). Doug Ducey would have won the Arizona senate seat which is also important context because we did have someone better available. He won’t be that formidable next time because a governors achievements are forgotten and no longer appreciated once he ceases to be governor.
Karri Lake almost made herself an exception to the rule by brilliant use of the Tu Quoque argument which allowed her to run ahead of Blake Masters but she did a lot of mistakes, and it is usually better not to make a big mistake in the first place instead of trying to make up for it. While she did come very close to overcoming her stop the steal handicap telling a set of voters not to support you is political malpractice unless you are addressing nazis or communists. While the John McCain machine is bad the John McCain voter….well that extra 2% was the difference between becoming governor or being exceptionally close.
The margins in all of these races also have to be put into the context that Joe Biden is a very unpopular president right now, and the economy is at the very least not in a good place, and the world is getting less stable and Joe Biden has been president for 2 years. In perspective the economy was fantastic when Trump suffered from a blue wave year.
No matter how you slice it we had the opportunity for the ultimate red wave year but it didn’t happen because the major races featured decisions by both sides to make Trump the issue. It was ultimately our candidates who chose to do that by refusing to accept the 2020 election, and it was us who chose to make that our liability by selecting those candidates, and Trump for endorsing based on loyalty to that narrative.
McConnell wanted to pull Thad Cochran, riddled with Alzheimer’s, across the line in 2014. Had to support serious fraud in the Mississippi primary runoff to get what he wanted.
Mitch McConnell wouldn’t know candidate quality if it smacked him in the face.
What Mitch McConnell does know, and can spot 10 miles off, is future obedience to Mitch McConnell.
Nobody has ever alleged that the MI primary was fraud laden, if it was that would imply you shouldn’t vote in MI because a board of (imaginary) boogeymen decide elections anyway (so let Democrats win it and blame fraud?) but whatever floats your boat.
I do not like self harming myths that have as their only purpose helping Trump reach the point of losing the 2024 election. I would rather win with someone else.
Danny,
Your claim that backroom deals aren’t cut to decide which candidates power brokers throw their support to is naive at best. McConnell chooses to play games in the primary races. The MS race with Cochran is one example of him trying to prevent non establishment type outsider or populist candidates from getting to the Senate.
Another example would be Alaska in this cycle where he close to support Murkowski who is unreliable at best over a more populist candidate.
The problem is he is talking about a primary that not only is there no evidence of voter fraud in; there isn’t even any allegation of voter fraud either besides his trying to create it as a myth. The loser of the primary in question was extremely bitter bitter about it claiming he only lost because Democrats crossed over party lines to vote for his opponent. Calling people obeying the laws of their state and voting according to those laws fraud….the only reason I could think of for that is discouraging Mississippians from voting in the future.
I also wouldn’t spend too much time on that particular primary. Mississippi like 49 other states gives back to the federal government more than it receives in federal spending so why on Earth should Mississippi be deprived of federal spending it earns by being a net contributor? Mississippi says no thanks we don’t want it that wouldn’t mean the federal government doesn’t spend money it means the other states each get a little bit more spending while Mississippi loses out economically. Thad Cochran made that his exact pitch in the primary and he won because that actually does make a lot of sense. Mississippi contributes it deserve to receive as well just like the 49 other states (about the numbers showing that every state is a net contributor this article should establish they all are https://thefederalist.com/2017/11/17/red-states-tax-takers-blue-states-tax-makers/ ).
Thad Cochran did not win because he stuffed the ballot, not even his opponent claimed that. We can’t afford demonization and dehumanization of Democrats because it establishes harmful myths to our side that prevent us from winning; let alone myths to demonize and dehumanize our own side.
He is claiming “serious fraud” in other words don’t vote in Mississippi the Republican candidates are awful and they don’t need your vote anyway because uncle McConnell will stuff the ballots so they win regardless. There is no other way to claim the elections are fake.
McConnell is saying certain (especially Senate) candidates weren’t worth it. What does that mean? Was Kari Lake the same kind of (R) as Dr. Oz? Hell no. Could any given Pa. voter vote for Kari Lake and vice versa? No, but those aren’t the variables we deal with. Were either of these two examples completely out of bounds with (R) policy? Nope.
I find this irresponsible jerk from Kentucky to be the problematic politician.
I know Lake wasn’t running for Senate. It doesn’t matter. She and Masters could have won their respective races.
Don’t bring up race or you will be shunned.
What matters most in politics is getting elected. The Stop the Steal slate isn’t electable.
McConnell is right.
McConnell wants to lose. Look at Fetterman as an example as a winning candidate, lol.
Yes lets look at
1. Corporate America
2. Corporate Media
3. Big Tech
4. Academia
Those alone (I could name further institutions) made Oz the underdog.
Gee. Sounds like you’re saying that our vote doesn’t matter.
You can’t play it both ways, Danny.
It doesn’t. We don’t have honest elections anymore.
He’s dizzy from all the spin he’s doing for His Precious. All Danny cares about is winning elections. Getting actual conservative policy done, not so much.
We all saw what Mitch’s word was worth after voters gave the GOP the Congress and the Presidency.
Stop being a bloody liar.
You Henry are a liar I will not take you lying about what I just said.
What I said was Democrat advantages mean they could get away with chosing low quality candidates so we can’t so we have to chose good quality candidates.
So yes your vote counts it counts a great deal, our side can’t afford to lose it and has no institutions propping it up and is up against major institutions.
What claiming the races are fixed by fraud means is that there is nothing that you could do to help our side.
Your narrative is don’t you dare vote, my response is the truth which is vote responsibly in the primary for someone who could win, and understand what we are not in a position to get away with losing.
Feel free to keep trying to repulse moderates with comments about rigged elections while continuing to suppress Republicans from voting by declaring the vote makes no difference.
While you may cause our nation to become a one party totalitarian leftist state understand Joe Biden appreciates your work as his special agent.
Nothing I have ever said suggested your vote doesn’t make a difference what I have done is explain why we need good candidates and you can’t with any pretense to be telling the truth point to bad democrat candidates to claim no we don’t.
Again keep lying if you want Democrats to win, start acknowledging the truth if you don’t.
Sen. McConnell is known for snatching a win from the jaws of victory. His incompetence, along with that of RNC chair Ronna Daniels, is what cause the red wave to become a burp.
He is right. We needed better quality candidates. Sadly, voters weren’t paying attention. Zeldin, Oz and Tshibaka all should have won their races.
Fetterman, seriously?
When the same people do it the same way repeatedly and successfully, it’s not incompetence, it’s purposeful.
You spelled Donald J Trump wrong.
Trump endorsed this guy is a big negative for me on Trump. McConnell is a big problem and it was obvious when Trump did the endorsement. Ole Mitch is the epitome of what is wring in DC. But he will serve as long as he wants.
The candidates Trump chose are candidates Democrats spent millions boosting in the primary. Stop trying to indulge figments of your imagination McConnell is right.
So where was McConnell spending money boosting his ‘quality candidates’, then?
Oh that’s right.
He was busy pissing away tens of millions of dollars trying to keep his pet RINO Murkowski winning against a Republican.
He sent a lot more than Trump did, and spent almost everything he raised and as a result the Republican slate for 2022 was the best funded Republican slate in history.
You are free to lie your head of but yes you are lying and I will call you out for being a liar.
As far as Trump vs McConnell spending in 2022 it wasn’t even close.
Furthermore why is it that Trump candidates needed McConnell’s money? Shouldn’t they have been able to raise it themselves if they were great candidates?
He spent 6 million in Alaska. That 6 million wouldn’t have changed any election but did buy Murkowski’s loyalty in case of her winning.
McConnell was trying to win the senate, Trump was trying to field stop the steal candidates in New Hampshire a state he lost in a landslide.
There WERE no so-called ‘quality candidates’. Walker won 68% of the votes in the primary. The 2nd place got 14%. Heck of a quality there, bro!
And lying about what?
You are the liar, and I have the receipts. McConnell didn’t spend ‘6 million in Alaska’. He explicitly and provably spent 7 million alone IN THE PRIMARY (he formally announced the ad buy himself in April leading up to the August primary, and there was MUCH more spending with not-clear amounts), then over 10 million more in the ACTUAL ELECTION, in addition to attending multiple fundraisers with her.
You are the liar, and you can’t even keep your lies straight. You keep screaming about Democrats SPENDING MILLIONS TO BOOST TRUMP CANDIDATES. Well, seems like those millions would have been well spent countering that, then, wouldn’t it? Instead of being pissed away on a seat a conservative was GUARANTEED to win.
Maybe that 7 million in the primary could have boosted one of your so-called ‘quality candidates’ to a primary victory over those icky Trumpsters so you wouldn’t be whining about it.
All told with the actual ad buys in the primary and actual election and the fundraisers, McConnell poured over $20 million into Alaska (some estimates are much higher but can’t be verified as they were funneled through other PACs and its a whole discussion about it), a race a Republican WAS GUARANTEED TO WIN.
And oh by the way, Murkowski LITERALLY ENDORSED A DEMOCRAT to win the Congressional seat in Alaska.
Aren’t you the one always whining on this site about SCHUMER AND PELOSI THANK YOU when we say we’re going to refuse to support the RINOs?
Trump IS NOT the Senate Minority Leader. McConnell is. McConnell’s LITERAL JOB as Minority Leader during elections is to raise and spend money to win more seats. If he had the slightest bit of sense and desire to win, instead of whining about ‘quality candidates’, he would have been working with Trump the entire time.
But McConnell refused. Because he knows that Trump has his number now, and that if they had won the Senate he would have been thrown out.
McConnell didn’t want to win seats OR the Senate. He wanted to remain Minority Leader, and he succeeded.
McConnell conceded the Senate in August, Danny. It’s even quoted for you in this article for you to ignore again.
Gee the primary is all that matters…NO.
To anyone who cares even slightly about the future and is ready to throw things the American people hate that are frankly prince worship not principled under the bus to secure the future.
I just relooked up the figures and McConnell spent a total of 6 million in Alaska total, including other Republicans there was 13 million dollars.
What I find interesting is that 38 million dollars of Walker’s 72 million dollar war chest was Mitch McConnell, 16 million of the 23 million dollar war chest of Bolduc was Mitch McConnell, 38 million of Ted Budd’s 65 million was Mitch McConnell, 26 million of Laxalt’s 57 million was Mitch McConnell, 32 million of Vance’s 39 million was Mitch McConnell, and Oz got a miniscule 52 million dollars from McConnell out of a campaign of 105 million.
I find the real numbers interesting because in addition to showing the only Trump people are lying when they claim McConnell threw the bad quality candidates under the bus (rofl) but our candidates had by the standards of every nation on planet Earth an extremely well funded campaign.
McConnell spent more than Trump on individual senate races.
Can it be any more ironic that the man often deservedly ranked as the most disliked politician lectures us about “candidate quality”?
Takes nads of steel.
McConnell is a mixed bag. Without him, Garland would have been a Supreme Court justice, happily voting in lockstep with every Leftist and spiking everything in the Trump agenda he could from that post. On the other hand, the sharpest knives in his collection are reserved for the backs of conservatives, and he’s more than happy to work with Dems to advance legislation that conservatives oppose.
I am so UTTERLY SICK of people bringing up Garland like Mitch won some great victory for conservatives.
He won a victory for Bitch McConnell.
He did it not because he thought he was going to get an actual conservative, but because he expected a conservative majority to be negotiating with President Clinton for an appropriate payoff before he allowed the far leftist to sail through.
How does the GOPe claim candidate quality when 2 dead people got elected by the Democrats
McConnell is not completely wrong. Better candidates would have a chance of beating Warnock or Fetterman. Other factors like 90% negative coverage by dinosaur media, Democrat outspending 2 & 3 times. Questionable ballot handling/harvesting. A Senate leader who would rather remain in the minority than not being the leader in a majority. All take a toll.
So where was this so-called ‘better candidate’?
Walker won 68% of the vote in the primary. Nobody else came close. You can whine about him all you want but there was nobody else anywhere near competitive.
Almost all of Bitch McConnell’s so-called ‘quality’ candidates got crushed in the primaries and it wasn’t even close.
If your candidates were so much better ‘quality’, you jackass RINO putz, then why couldn’t they win?
Herschel Walker won 68% of the primary vote. The next highest got a laughable 13%.
So where was your ‘quality’ candidate, you piece of crap?
What that shows is that we selected a very poor candidate.
The Republican primary is not the general election. By your standards Larry Hogan who we should have nominated for senate was an inferior candidate than the person we ended up nominating in Maryland.
Brian Kemp an actual high quality candidate won Georgia twice, the second time in a landslide.
Candidate quality obviously does not matter. After all, Mitch McConnell wins his race.
The $$ that R’s donate the NRSC, that donors think is going to get spent helping candidates like Walker win general elections, actually gets spent – under McConnell’s direction (he has total control of this) – on RINO candidates like Lisa Murkowski win their races in primaries, or now in ranked choice elections, against actual Conservative R’s.
Then, if McConnell’s preferred, and funded, candidate loses in the primary and the actual Conservative goes on to a tough race in the general election – like we did this year in NH, GA, and AZ, what does he do? He refuses to fund them.
Its not just that McConnell prefers Democrat Senators to Conservative R Senators, its that he’s in a position to determine the results of the elections – because he holds the purse strings on the $$ needed to win.
Herschel Walker got outspent 2:1.
Then, he blames Trump and bloviates endlessly about “candidate quality”.
Bonus: McConnell doesn’t do jack squat to help recruit quality candidates in any race at all, anywhere, ever.
Meanwhile, Trump endorsed candidates won over 200 races this cycle, and lost less than 20. So, hey, lets focus ONLY on a few of the races where his endorsed candidate lost.
Bitch is doing what he loves now. He’s in his preferred minority wheeling and dealing RINO votes for his palz across the aisle. Thus, he ensures the Ds get what they want and the people he wants to help elect his so-called quality candidates get little to nothing. Exhibit A: the amnesty bill. Ds get 2 million potential, new voters and Rs get a year extension on Title 42. What a deal!
The answer is simple-find DeSantis like candidates not candidates who are picked soley because they were interested in replaying 2020