Tristan Justice: Re-electing McConnell was the best gift establishment GOP could give to Trump

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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.

Downing: McConnell’s proxy war with Trump in Alaska is stuck on stupid

19 COMMENTS

  1. Has Tristan Justice saddled up and “mounted” a dead horse? If so, I’m sure he’ll ride him hard and get off after he’s riden him enough!

  2. That’s your party! A debt of $31,301,987,256.99 and growing. With the dems as a willing partner, your party did that! And you all stand for Liberty and Freedom…. I don’t think those words mean what you think they mean.

    • Ok, so what’s the solution? Vote Libertarian and never win again? Better off trying to change the GOP than playing spoiler so the Democrat Communists are assured victory.

  3. In any other arena, a failure of this magnitude would result in mass firings. Not the GOP.

    This is why the country is where it is. Republicans accept and reward failure.

    • The Big$ donors are throwing Trump under the bus and migrating to DeSantis, that is the way Capitalism works

    • Not so much firings. Rather, it should be resignations for failure.

      Note that none of the prognosticators managed to capture the scope of the democrat early voting operation, something Our Side needs to get proficient in doing really, really fast. Cheers –

  4. GOP Needs to go away. We need a true party of common sense be that will not happen because of all the money their taking in. Show me a poor politician.

  7. Tristan, I’m surprised you used this quote below.
    “Neither Trump nor McConnell looks triumphant after last week’s elections.”

    It is hard to look triumphant when corrupt election officials continue to steal elections from the people of this country. The fact that mainstream media “journalists” continue to avoid the obvious should give you chills. The majority of them are corrupt and controlled, force feeding Americans loads of crap that have little to no facts backing up their stories. There was good news on many fronts, but the corrupt election system was focused on the big races. Arizona and Pennsylvania were the biggest targets. The swamp couldn’t lose those state senator seats. How long America will you sit on your cans and pretend there isn’t a problem with the loads of evidence that already exist? How does a person with brain damage win a Senator seat? What will it take for Americans to stand up like Brazil and say, “no more”!

  8. I find it fascinating that the author made the statement that many of Trump’s nominees didn’t make it past the finish line. In fact, many of Trump’s picks did make it past the finish line! Trump endorsed close to 220 candidates and just shy of 200 of those candidates were elected. He had 90% of his picks Win! Sure the more vocal, contentious candidates did not, like OZ and Lake, but a quick analysis shows both AZ and PA are fraught with corruption.

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