Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, in an unprecedented moment of candor, has acknowledged that at least some of his party’s candidates running for seats in the upper chamber this year stink. And the odds of assuming the majority as the result of a “red wave,” once considered a sure thing, are starting to look dismal, like the Washington Nationals reaching the World Series.
“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” the Louisville lawmaker told those attending a Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Florence. “Senate races are just different — they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.
“Right now, we have a 50-50 Senate and a 50-50 country, but I think when all is said and done this fall, we’re likely to have an extremely close Senate, either our side up slightly or their side up slightly,” McConnell said.
Such honesty coming from a party leader in the midst of a campaign, Republican or Democrat, is almost unheard of. Coming from McConnell? Impossible.
It’s not that Mitch will normally lie – exactly — about GOP prospects as much as he will skate around the issue like Bobby Orr. McConnell has always followed Falstaff’s dictum, “The better part of valor is discretion.”
Until now.
Here we instead find McConnell following Jimmy Cagney’s advice on acting, “Walk in, plant your feet, look the other fellow in the eye and tell the truth.” It’s so sufficiently bizarre and out of character that one is warranted to ask, “Where’s Mitch and what have you done with him?”
And, bear in mind, McConnell is, indeed, telling the truth. Three Republican challengers and at least one incumbent are so excruciatingly awful, not to mention laugh-inducing, that, as Bob Dylan sang in “Idiot Wind,” “It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe.”
There are some doozies in here, folks.
In Georgia there’s the old Bulldog, Herschel Walker, perhaps the greatest college football running back of all time, who is as familiar with the nation’s current issues and policies as a three-year-old studying quantum physics.
The environment appears to be Walker’s expertise. He recently criticized the recent global climate change package passed by Congress and signed by President Biden as being too kind to trees.
“They continue to try to fool you like they’re helping you out, but they’re not,” Walker told a crowd in Sandy Springs, GA. “They’re not helping you out, because a lot of the money is going into trees. You know that, don’t you? It’s going into trees. We’ve got enough trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?”
Back in July he discussed a legislative package known as The Green New Deal.
“Since we don’t control the air, our good air decides to float over to China’s bad air,” Walker said. “So, when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So, it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we got to clean that back up.”
We could continue on Walker, who is trying to unseat Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock, but it would be a waste of time because most of his comments are gibberish and indecipherable.
Then there is Mehmet Oz, a one-time television personality running for an open seat in Pennsylvania against Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democrat, even though he apparently resides, for the most part, in New Jersey and voted in the 2018 election in Turkey, his native land.
Oz may prove more adept at the issues emanating from along the Bosphorus than the Potomac. He recently sought to highlight the increase in food costs in a video, claiming he was sent by his wife to pick up vegetables for a “crudite,” leaving many Pennsylvania voters to go running for their French-English dictionaries to find out what the hell he was talking about.
Regardless, Oz has emerged as a candidate who likely can’t find Wilkes-Barre on a Pennsylvania map and a millionaire out of touch with the voters once described by James Carville is living in a state with “Pittsburgh on one end, Philadelphia on the other end and Alabama in the middle.”
In Arizona, incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut married to former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, seriously injured in a shooting incident some years back, is being challenged by businessman Blake Masters, a fervent consumer of the Trump-brand Kool-Aid – the election was rigged, etc., etc. – who has spent most of the time backtracking on previously held positions.
During the GOP primary, Masters said he wanted to privatize Social Security, which everyone can tell you is a sure loser. Yet, soon after winning the nomination he basically said, “Forget I mentioned it.”
On abortion, a hot-button issue since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, Masters was once described on his web site as “100% pro-life” who favored a federal fetal personhood law that recognizes that “unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.”
Now that polls show strong voter support for the pro-choice position on abortion, Masters is abandoning his extreme views, hinting that he would only support an abortion ban on “very late-term and partial-birth abortion.”
The guy’s all over the map.
The incumbent on the mediocre to stunningly terrible list is Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who has been associated with any number of outrages, including the plot to subvert the 2020 election by submitting slates of fake “electors” to Congress on Jan. 6.
Let’s wrap this one up quick – Johnson is a proven imbecile.
So Republican chances are waning in those four states, leaving McConnell on the outside looking in on his chances of recapturing the status of majority leader. He, obviously, holds some responsibility for the slide in GOP prospects, and it can’t be said that drawing attention to the party’s godawful candidates is very helpful.
McConnell is also responsible for the choice of Sen. Rick Scott, R-FL, to serve as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which thus far has proved to be a disaster.
Under Scott, the committee has been forced to cancel a reported $10 million in television ad buys in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin due to what The New York Times described as “a likely sign of financial troubles” stemming from slowing pace of financial contributions.
The NRSC, according to the Times, citing two media-tracking sources, cut more than $5 million in Pennsylvania, more than $2 million in Wisconsin, and another $2 million in Arizona.
That’s important because once those ad buys are gone they’re lost forever, stunting any effort to make up for lost ground via the airwaves.
While all this was going on, Scott was floating around on a luxury yacht off the coast of Italy and facing criticism for unnecessarily spending the party into oblivion. He has also feuded with McConnell on tactics.
Then of course, there’s the big dog – Donald John Trump, the erstwhile president, the perhaps future resident of Leavenworth, KS, who used his substantial influence within the party to gain these jokers their nominations.
McConnell had several opportunities to force Trump to the sidelines – two impeachments, a proposal to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection that he fueled – and Mitch twiddled his thumbs, allowing the Lord of Mara-a-Lago to proceed on his merry way, unencumbered by his sins against the republic.
Mitch’s even said he would vote for the Orange Ogre if he wins the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. His reward? This from Truth Social, the social media platform launched by the Trumpster:
“Why do Republicans Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard working Republican candidates for the United States Senate? This is such an affront to honor and to leadership.”
And this:
“Mitch McConnell is not an Opposition Leader, he is a pawn for the Democrats to get whatever they want. He is afraid of them, and will not do what has to be done. A new Republican Leader in the Senate should be picked immediately!”
Trump also insulted McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chou, who served almost four years as transportation secretary during his administration, calling her “Coco’’ for some oddball reason.
McConnell refused comment.
There is some speculation that McConnell intends to use his own political action committee, the Senate Leadership Fund, to fill the ever-expanding void, saving the day by pumping dollars into these various campaigns, allowing him to emerge as some kind of hero and once again handing him the only job he has ever desired – Senate majority leader.
Who knows? In these political times, unprecedented in its craziness, it might just work.
On the other hand, he might find out, as Cassius did, that the fault “is not in our stars / but in ourselves.”