The Case Against Mitch McConnell For Leader

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is making a play for another term in leadership next week while control of the upper chamber remains in the balance after the Kentucky lawmaker’s chess game sabotaged chances for a GOP majority.

In September, McConnell inaugurated the fall midterms by undermining Republicans in key races when the GOP Senate chief complained of “candidate quality.”

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” McConnell said on Fox News just before Labor Day, the unofficial start of the fall campaign season. “Senate races are just different, they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”

McConnell’s Money Prioritized Allies, Not Majority

McConnell’s super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, went on to gut desperately needed campaign cash from conservative candidates in Arizona and New Hampshire who refused to kiss the ring of Washington monarchs. In Arizona, McConnell axed $18 million from the race where Republican venture capitalist Blake Masters sought to bring down a well-funded Democrat incumbent. While the Masters race remains too close to call, Gen. Don Bolduc in New Hampshire was comfortably defeated by Democrat Sen. Maggie Hassan, who captured a second term despite multiple polls showing the Republican within the margins of error. Bolduc was similarly abandoned by the GOP leader with $5.6 million cut from the contest. Both Bolduc and Masters signaled support for another candidate to lead the Senate conference if elected to the upper chamber.

[READ: In Final Arizona Push, Blake Masters Blasts The Washington Establishment]

McConnell took money from the competitive pick-up contests and redirected resources into Alaska and Colorado, the former featuring a race between two Republicans and the latter featuring a candidate who alienated the base. Alienating the base, however, has become routine practice for McConnell, who boasts a lower favorability rating than President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. In other words, McConnell is the most unpopular politician in the country, a fact Democrats used to their advantage in this election cycle by villainizing McConnell as the new GOP “boogeyman.”

It wasn’t just former President Donald Trump that Democrats ran against, it was McConnell, and McConnell ran just as hard against Republicans who threatened his perch in leadership.

In Alaska, McConnell’s PAC spent more than $6 million to boost Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski over the state party’s endorsed challenger Kelly Tshibaka. The spending that could have benefitted tight races to pick up seats in Arizona and New Hampshire instead earned McConnell a formal censure by the Alaska Republican Party for the Senate leader’s intraparty interference. Meanwhile in Colorado, Republican construction executive Joe O’Dea, who benefitted from $1.25 million of McConnell’s money, lost by 11 points with 88 percent of precincts reporting.

McConnell Surrendered to the Biden Agenda

While Republicans ran on a platform hammering crime and inflation with few specifics, McConnell handed Democrats major wins during President Joe Biden’s first