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 midtermsSenate 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 LeadSenate 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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