Mitch McConnell is in trouble.
After botching the 2022 midterms, he’s facing intense criticism for failing to flip a single state.
And now, McConnell’s political future is at stake as he fights off a massive revolt from his own caucus.
Mitch McConnell promised Republicans that he would deliver a GOP Senate majority to them in 2023.
Instead, he somehow managed to lose a seat in the Senate while failing to defeat a single Democrat incumbent or flip any states to Republicans.
In short, McConnell’s performance in the 2022 midterms was an unmitigated disaster.
And a huge reason why Republicans across the board failed was because McConnell was more worried about preserving his own majority within the Senate caucus than he was building a new Republican majority in the upper chamber of Congress itself.
For McConnell, it was far more important to make sure that a majority of Republicans supported him as their party leader than it was to make sure that Republicans actually won at least 51 Senate seats.
That’s why McConnell directed money away from Republicans running in critical swing states like Arizona and New Hampshire, because the GOP candidates in these must-win states had expressed that they would not support McConnell as the Senate GOP leader.
And now that they have lost, McConnell is facing a revolt from within his own party for abandoning Republican candidates in races that conservatives could not afford to lose.
The Washington Examiner reports, “Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has once again been elected to lead the Senate GOP conference after a contentious vote in which the minority leader was challenged by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), chairman of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm.
Scott’s challenge marked the first contested race for Senate leader for either party since 1996 but is reminiscent of 2014, when Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-NV) faced six “no” votes in his leadership race after Democrats lost the Senate.”
The only reason McConnell barely won this leadership challenge is because Rick Scott is an even bigger RINO than McConnell is, having previously endorsed massive gun control while he served as Governor of Florida.
But Scott’s defeat is not a sign that McConnell is entirely out of the woods yet.
McConnell has yet to be challenged by a conservative, and the 2024 elections could mark the end of McConnell’s career as head of the Senate GOP caucus should Republicans sweep Democrats in two years.
That’s because the Senate seats that are up for election in 2024 are some of the most vulnerable for Democrats in the entire country, with Republicans only having to defend Texas and Florida, both of which are heavily favored for the GOP.
In contrast, Democrats have to defend seats in states like West Virginia, Ohio, and Montana, as well as numerous battlegrounds across the Midwest.
And should conservatives flip even just a handful of these Democrat-held seats, they could marshal the votes needed to oust McConnell as leader in two years.
