By TRISTAN JUSTICE | THE FEDERALIST
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was re-elected to another term as GOP conference chief on Wednesday after an underwhelming midterm performance kept Republicans from taking a majority in the upper chamber.
But McConnell’s win as Republicans lose is just going to be more ammo for former President Donald Trump, who announced a third bid for the White House just one night before the Senate leader’s re-election.
Neither Trump nor McConnell looks triumphant after last week’s elections. Many of Trump’s top candidates lost key races while McConnell emerges as the culprit for losing the majority. McConnell’s political action committee, the Senate Leadership Fund, re-routed scarce resources from competitive pick-up opportunities to the Alaska Senate contest between two Republicans.
But while several Trump-backed candidates never made it across the finish line, Trump did not deliberately sabotage the effort. McConnell did, and for it, he drew a last-minute leadership challenge from Florida Sen. Rick Scott.
Scott, also a popular former two-term governor of Florida, chaired the National Republican Senate Committee this cycle, spending millions on candidates McConnell had abandoned in competitive pick-up races. The NRSC spent heavily in Arizona and New Hampshire, in particular, where the SLF had dropped Republican candidates who had pledged opposition to McConnell for leader.
But despite the challenge, McConnell captured another two years in leadership in a vote of 37-10 by secret ballot. One senator abstained. The vote came less than 24 hours after Trump’s campaign announcement from Mar-a-Lago.
“America’s comeback starts right now,” Trump said. “Your country is being destroyed before your eyes.”
All the fundamentals going into the 2022 Election Day indicated Republicans would sweep the midterms. Inflation at a four-decade high has left 63 percent of Americans living paycheck to paycheck. Security at the southern border is a joke, and crime has become so widespread nationwide that leftist district attorneys even fell on the electoral chopping block. More than 70 percent of Americans said they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, and just 40 percent said they approve of President Joe Biden. Where midterms are a referendum on the president and party in power, the outlook for Democrats looked as bleak as the Titanic headed for an iceberg…
Read the rest of this column at The Federalist.
