Kentucky’s Republican primary for the seat of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell is a contest of who can show the most love for Donald Trump – or the most hatred for immigrants.
That was clear in the first debate Monday night among the three leading candidates, who remained in lockstep behind Trump on the Iran War. But other Kentucky Republicans, including a candidate who wasn’t invited to the debate, have misgivings about the president’s “excursion.” And Democrats seem poised to take advantage, following their first debate Tuesday night.
First, the GOP box score: Sixth District Rep. Andy Barr, the most practiced campaigner, mentioned Trump three times in his opening statement and six times in his closer. The final burst put him ahead of businessman Nate Morris – 16 to 12, with Daniel Cameron, former state attorney general, at 7 by my rough count.
That somewhat mirrored Trump’s words about the three at his Boone County rally a few days earlier. Barr is “a wonderful man who’s been with me all the way . . . a good guy and a warrior,” Trump gushed. He merely called Morris “a good man” and to Cameron said only, “Thank you, Daniel.”
Trump thus reflected the current handbook, which makes Barr the favorite and Morris the contender. A Barr poll had Cameron ahead by 2 points March 10-12, but Cameron is short of money for major electronic advertising. The others have plenty, with Barr well-funded by traditional contributors and Morris running on his own money and $14 million from Elon Musk and other billionaires.
Most current ads are about immigration. Barr attacks “domestic terrorists,” defends ICE and calls himself “Trump tough.” A pro-Morris group misrepresents Barr’s efforts to get visas for Afghans who worked for the U.S., citing one’s assault on National Guard troops. “They don’t belong here,” the ad says, reflecting Morris’s silly vow to stop all immigration until all undocumented aliens are deported.
At the debate, the first questioner asked when Congress should have a say about the war and “Do you support sending American boots on the ground in Iran?” All three candidates said they would support whatever decision Trump made. That’s not the stand of one of the other candidates, Michael Faris, an Air Force veteran who converts military helicopters to civilian use and wasn’t invited to the Louisville debate by the local Republican Party.
“Sending in 2,500 Marines does not look good right now,” Faris told me in an interview, noting Trump’s recent deployment of a rapid-response unit to an unspecified location in the Persian Gulf region, likely to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump didn’t appear to plan for the likelihood that Iran would block shipping in the waterway that delivers a fifth of the world’s oil. “It looks to me like there wasn’t exactly a great plan going in,” Faris said, adding later, “President Trump campaigned that he would not do exactly what’s being done,” start wars. Why? Probably because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lured him into it, Faris said.
You’ll hear no such talk from the top three candidates, who are loath to say anything that might offend the easily offended president, who could still make an endorsement, but Kentucky’s senators are speaking up.
McConnell has endorsed the Iran campaign, but on March 12 said “There’s been plenty of discussion about where this war fits among U.S. strategic priorities, and I hope the administration will be more forthcoming on this front soon.” He closed with a jab at Trump emissary Steve Witkoff for saying the Russians can be believed when they say they’re not helping Iran target U.S. assets.
Sen. Rand Paul generally opposes foreign entanglements and deficit spending. On “Sunday night with Chuck Todd,” he said the war is unconstitutional and, due to its cost, against our national interest – and said Trump’s next big move will probably be driven by economic concerns. As Trump flails for an exit, national security may yield to gas prices.
There are many faults to find with Trump’s handling of the war, including using it to raise political money, including a video of him saluting the bodies of dead soldiers (while wearing a cap!) and promising national-security briefings for contributors; being loose with his cell-phone number and answering phone calls during war councils; removing minesweepers from the gulf; and most important, failing to give the nation a clear sense of what victory looks like.
Trump seems undisciplined and unserious about the most serious thing a president can do – take us to war. Republicans who are serious about serving in the Senate should be ashamed of him. Maybe they are, but they do a good job of hiding it.
Four of the Democrats running for senator made clear in their first televised debate that they oppose the war, and the two veterans stressed their military experience.
“There was no imminent threat here. And I have been to war. I spent two years of my life in a tent in the Middle East,” said former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath, who was the nominee for the seat in 2020. “This president doesn’t know what he’s doing, and I would not be funding it.”
State House Minority Leader Pam Stevenson, a longtime Air Force lawyer, said, “There’s some circumstances when there’s imminent threats that the president can take action but he must, he or she must immediately come back to the public and say ‘This is what I did, why I did,’ so the world can understand and we can understand. And that didn’t happen.”
Before that, horse trainer Dale Romans said of Trump, “Within hours he should have been on Capitol Hill, and been on TV, explaining what the threat was, what the mission was, what he would deem success, and what his exit strategy was, and he’s done none of those things.”
Former state Rep. Charles Booker, the 2022 Senate nominee, said “We have a warmongering president who doesn’t care about humanity. He doesn’t care about those children who were bombed. He doesn’t care about our loved ones in Kentucky who put their life on the line and are not coming home.”
Could the president become such a liability that the right Democrat could actually have a chance of winning a state that gave him three landslides? It’s a longshot, but in the Trump Era, almost anything can happen.