Will a Democrat Run Again Mitch Mcconnell in 2020

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (middle) looks toward President Donald Trump at the White House in 2020. Stefani Reynolds/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

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Stefani Reynolds/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (heart) looks toward President Donald Trump at the White House in 2020.

Stefani Reynolds/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Russian threat to Ukraine has Washington on border. No one wants the heightened tensions in Eastern Europe to escalate into state of war. Merely there'south at least one prominent Republican in the Capitol not complaining that the media spotlight has shifted overseas.

Last week, Mitch McConnell, the seven-term Republican senator from Kentucky who has been his party'southward leader in the Senate for the by fifteen years, found himself locked in a high-contour confrontation with the erstwhile president, who insists he is still the party's leader.

It was non the first round of this long-running tour, but it was perhaps the virtually clarifying and the most consequential for the elections this fall and in 2024.

McConnell had felt compelled to respond when the Republican National Committee censured 2 Republican members of the House for serving on the special commission investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. The RNC had characterized the events on January. half-dozen as "ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse."

McConnell would have none of that. Dissimilar the members of the RNC, he actually witnessed what happened in the Capitol on that day. And he has e'er been clear about what he saw and what information technology meant.

"It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to foreclose the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from 1 administration to the adjacent," McConnell said last week.

That was no more than than virtually of his party colleagues in the Senate or amidst the nation's governors would say. Simply he was proverb information technology in plain English language in public with reporters gathered to hear information technology. And he was saying it in the certain knowledge that his defence of the investigating commission and the legitimacy of the 2020 election would bring down the wrath of Donald Trump.

"Mitch McConnell does not speak for the Republican Party and does not correspond the views of the vast bulk of its voters," Trump shot back in a statement released by his Save America PAC. "He did nothing to fight for his constituents and cease the most fraudulent election in American history."

It is difficult to detect a comparable substitution between a president and a Senate leader of the same political party anywhere in U.S. history.

To be sure, presidents have often crossed swords with the leaders of the opposition party and not infrequently disagreed with those of their own political party. Just the latter disputes are generally not put out for public consumption. The fratricidal nature and sharp wording of the Trump-McConnell feud are unprecedented.

The scenario was different in 2002

Late in 2002, Republican President George W. Bush distanced himself from his own party'southward Senate leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, after Lott made a stunning remark at a retirement political party for Strom Thurmond. Lott had suggested the country "wouldn't have had all these bug over the years" if Thurmond had been elected president in 1948, when Thurmond was the segregationist nominee of united states Rights Party.

That led to Lott stepping down as leader, making way for another senator with closer ties with the White House. But Bush was the sitting president at the time, still riding a huge wave of public support in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and preparing the nation for an impending war with Iraq.

President Bush'southward criticism of Sen. Trent Lott's racially controversial statements in 2002 ended his fourth dimension as majority leader. Simply Mitch McConnell holds greater sway than Lott did. Brooks Kraft/Corbis via Getty Images hide explanation

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Brooks Kraft/Corbis via Getty Images

President Bush'south criticism of Sen. Trent Lott's racially controversial statements in 2002 ended his fourth dimension equally majority leader. But Mitch McConnell holds greater sway than Lott did.

Brooks Kraft/Corbis via Getty Images

Trump is scarcely in a comparable position, having lost his bid for reelection and deeply divided the land.

And McConnell is in no sense likely to step downward. He has far more experience and far more achievements every bit leader than Lott. The crux is that he is backed by near of the GOP senators who are his virtually immediate and important "constituents."

That is why McConnell is well-positioned to break out to the upside on his current status as the minority leader in a l-50 Senate. Republicans need just one more than seat to brand that happen, and it could happen any time a vacancy occurs, or information technology could come with the midterm elections in November. McConnell's colleagues know there is no one more likely to oversee a successful electoral season than McConnell.

In 2014, for case, while serving in the Senate minority leader function, McConnell helped recruit and raise money for that fall's strong lineup of challengers who defeated five Democratic incumbents and captured an additional iv seats from Democrats who had retired. That gain of 9 seats (no GOP seat went Democratic) set McConnell up with a clear majority to resist Barack Obama on nearly every front in his final 2 years as president.

Only McConnell knows that a sweep of that kind is far from automatic. He was likewise the party leader for the Senate ballot bicycle in 2012, when vulnerable Democrats in Missouri and Indiana escaped because the Republicans nominated weaker candidates. At that time, the surging influence of the Tea Party was being felt throughout the state and helping difficult-line insurgents win primaries over more mainstream Republicans.

If something similar were to happen this year, one of two scenarios that McConnell wishes to avert could play out in the next circular of voting for party leader. In one, the pro-Trump rivals who vanquish McConnell'south preferred candidates become to Washington and vote for someone other than McConnell for leader. Two have already pledged to do so.

In the culling scenario, the pro-Trump rivals get the GOP nominations and lose to the Democrats in November. That might not merely frustrate McConnell'south drive for a clear bulk simply endanger his base of 50. Republican nominations are up for grabs in at least three states (Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina) where Democrats accept a shot at winning this fall.

Former President Donald Trump'due south office in the upcoming primaries runs the risk of creating a repeat of the Tea Party'southward influence in 2012, which left McConnell with a slate of general election candidates without broad appeal. Neb Clark/CQ-Roll Telephone call, Inc via Getty Images hibernate caption

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Bill Clark/CQ-Whorl Call, Inc via Getty Images

One-time President Donald Trump's office in the upcoming primaries runs the risk of creating a repeat of the Tea Party'due south influence in 2012, which left McConnell with a slate of general election candidates without wide appeal.

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

In that consequence, if his political party were to lose ground when it expects to gain, McConnell would be less assured of keeping his job. This would exist especially true bold Republicans do take over in the Business firm and Trump becomes an official candidate for 2024 and calls for McConnell'southward ouster.

McConnell's existent problem is that the Republican primary voters this year may well resemble those of 2012 more than those of 2014. The party has connected to motility in the direction once denoted in the phrase Tea Party and now symbolized past Trump.

That is the message in the RNC statement and in endless polls showing most Republicans say Trump actually won reelection in 2020 – despite the mountains of testify to the contrary.

The trouble is that McConnell is not merely dealing with Trump. He is dealing with the realities of the Republican Party that elevated Trump in 2016 and have virtually of the party's ranks following Trump's lead today.

Any lingering doubts about this tin can exist dispelled by reading the new book by New York Times reporter Jeremy West. Peters, Insurgency: How The Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They E'er Wanted. Peters has been following developments on the American right in the years since the original Tea Party demonstrations in 2009.

He has interviewed Trump, just most of his volume is what he learned from interviewing several hundred others relevant to his overall subject area over a flow of years. Among them is Patrick Buchanan, the speechwriter for Ronald Reagan who became a columnist and Tv set commentator and iii-time candidate for president. Peters argues that the "pitchfork Pat" ethos of Buchanan's campaigns in the 1990s kept right on marching through the starting time decades of the new century.

The move was diverted but not derailed by the years of the War on Terror. Then, in 2008, its anger was dorsum on a domestic track with the mortgage meltdown and Wall Street bailouts, and then the pinnacle of the Obamas (Michelle almost as much as Barack). The movement establish its next leading figure in Sarah Palin (whose 2008 oral communication as the vice presidential nominee has iconic status) and found its populist sugariness spot with the rise of the Tea Party and opposition to Obamacare (the Affordable Care Human action).

Merely the Tea Party could non become Obama out of office, and 2012 nominee Mitt Romney proved disappointing. The field of candidates for 2016 was huge, simply the insurgents before long plant their new vocalisation in Trump, the celebrity wheeler-dealer and reality TV star. Trump fixated issues such equally the nascency certificate and the "Basis Zilch Mosque" in New York City. He also savaged immigrants from United mexican states and from Muslim countries. And he began denigrating the integrity of elections before he had fifty-fifty been a candidate.

Peters has a notebook full of other characters and campaigns, from the speechwriters who worked with Palin to the on-air personalities who labored for Roger Ailes, the legendary creator of Fox News. Peters seems to have been present and reporting at every meaning turn in the Republican road, watching the political party gradually shed its state guild image in favor of pickup trucks and gun racks.

Trump is a production of toxic political climate, non a crusade

Along the manner, nosotros come across many media figures who will figure in Trump's eventual rise, including Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity merely also the shadowy Andrew Breitbart and his buddy and successor Steve Bannon. We encounter the roles played by David Bossie at Citizens United and Stephen Miller equally a Senate staffer, well before they get part of Trump's inner circle of hard-liners. Afterward, we see how they assume roles within Trump's new authorities, along with all those Fox personalities, one by one.

Peters conveys a cracking sense of having been present, not at the creation of this new GOP but for a disquisitional stage of its transformation. His determination is that Trump is less a crusade of the toxic political climate than he is a product of it. I might add that if Trump is neither the fuel nor the fire, he has surely been a highly effective accelerant. Thanks to him, what had been smoldering in our political culture has burst forth with far greater achieve and intensity.

Trump has brought the estrus. To date, Mitch McConnell has managed to convert that heat in service of the bourgeois calendar he himself wanted to attain. The results take included a paring back of federal regulations and taxes and the repopulating of the federal judiciary.

This year, with Trump out of part but never out of mind, McConnell has to harness his insurgent energy once more to pursue his own goals. And that will be a special claiming given that this time much of the heat is now being directed at him.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/15/1080407022/trump-vs-mcconnell-latest-round-between-gop-heavyweights-has-the-highest-stakes-

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