Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell has been the Republican leader of the Senate for the past 15 years. Recently, Florida Senator Rick Scott has decided to challenge him for that position given the poor showing that the Republican party just had in the midterms; normally, the party not in the White House makes gains in the midterms, and the Republicans were expecting a so called red wave this time. But it never came and while the party will in all likelihood take the House, they made no gains in the Senate, and may even lose a seat depending on how the run off in Georgia goes.
While I doubt that Scott will defeat McConnell, the fact that he is being challenged after building a reputation as a conservative hardliner while leading his party in the Senate is surprising, and if he were pushed out it would be quite a come down for a man that even Democrats have admitted was an effective leader.
Even if Scott doesn't depose him, McConnell will still have to spend the next two years as a minority leader with little power. He saw all of this coming: as far back as August, when he openly complained that his party's chances of winning the Senate were being undermined, saying that "candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.” This was, of course, his diplomatic way of saying that former President Donald Trump was endorsing a poor crop of Senate candidates (like Dr Oz) who were running extremist campaigns that alienated swing voters. And, as it turned out, he was right. But what he won't mention is that this is all his own fault.
Why? Because after the January 6th riot of 2021, McConnell did little to hide his disgust with Trump's actions, saying on the Senate floor that the former president's actions before the riot were "a disgraceful dereliction of duty." Clearly he thought that Trump was guilty of inciting a riot. And yet, he still couldn't bring himself to vote to remove Trump from office, and, without his support, the vote failed to reach the 67 vote majority that was needed in the Senate by 10 votes. (While we don't know for sure, it's pretty safe to say that if McConnell, as Republican leader in the Senate, had voted to remove Trump, it would have paved the way for other Republican Senators to follow). Trump, in typical fashion, still insulted McConnell after the vote, calling him a "stupid person" and nicknaming him "Old crow".
While it appears that McConnell and other Senators thought it wasn't necessary to vote to remove Trump given that he was almost about to leave the White House anyway, they miscalculated something. Removing him from office would have crucially prevented him from ever running again. Which meant that Trump's hold over the Republican party would have been broken, and with no chance of ever running again, he would have retreated to Mar-a-Lago to lick his wounds. And with him out of the picture, the midterms could have just been about Joe Biden and the economy with normal Republican candidates instead of Trump forcing his hand picked candidates to constantly say that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and the Republicans would almost surely have taken the Senate.
Instead, as we all now know, Trump has decided to run again in 2024, and the Republican party is stuck with the choice of supporting him despite his losing streak of three straight election losses, or trying to find another candidate and alienating his cult like followers in the Republican Party. Either way, McConnell looks like a fool for missing the opportunity to expunge Trump from his party, and there may be more losses coming soon. I hope.
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