Following Trump’s call for Republicans to leave McConnell, POLITICO on Wednesday contacted all 16 Republican senators running for re-election in 2022 to ask if they supported the Kentuckian as a majority leader. Only two responded.
“Leader McConnell has my full support and confidence,” said Senator John Thune (RS.D.), the second Senate Republican who drew Trump’s ire and one of the main threats after condemning the then president’s refusal to accept the election results. in a statement to POLITICO. “Nobody understands the Senate better than he does.”
Other Republicans, meanwhile, spent Wednesday condemning the conflict that Trump had fueled the day before, but did not criticize the former president, instead emphasizing his role in the Republican Party.
“If we get into personality disputes and fights, we will be in a challenging place in 2022 and 2024 – which means that America will be embracing socialism because we cannot act together in the right way,” Senator Tim Scott (RS.C.), the other 2022 Republican to express support for McConnell as a leader, said Wednesday on Fox News, adding that Trump is “the most powerful political figure on both sides”.
While no Republican Senator has echoed Trump’s attacks on McConnell, some are at least implicitly taking Trump’s side.
“When you look at the polls, if you take a look at the Republicans who voted for Trump, they would rather have Mitch McConnell or Donald Trump as the party’s head – it’s not even a contest,” Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) Said to conservative radio host Joe Pagliarulo this week.
McConnell, who voted for Trump’s acquittal in the impeachment trial, but criticized his behavior around the insurrection, has already threatened to enter the Republican Party primaries to oust candidates he believes cannot win in the general election. In response, Trump, the Twitter platform, released a lengthy statement on Tuesday criticizing McConnell and saying that Republicans who stay with him must be prepared to lose.
It is not an unfamiliar position for elected Republicans, who have had to deal with Trump’s diatribes against their colleagues and competing interests within the party for the past four years – including spending the two months before Georgia’s second round falsely claiming that the November election was stolen from him. With Trump out of the White House and no longer trying to push the legislation forward through a McConnell-controlled Senate, it remains an open question whether the Republican Party can crack down on internal fighting this time – or whether Trump really wants to.
McConnell and Trump have had bitter public feuds before, including after the party’s failure to revoke Obamacare and during Alabama’s contentious special election. These discussions resolved well ahead of the 2018 midterms, but McConnell made it clear in an interview with POLITICO last week that he would support candidates regardless of whether they were supported by Trump.
“The only thing that interests me is eligibility,” he said.
Josh Holmes, one of McConnell’s top advisers, emphasized that the senator’s “guiding principle” is to support candidates who can win. He said there could be a “huge overlap” between the candidates Trump supports and candidates supported by the Republican Party infrastructure in the Senate.
“Because Trump makes an endorsement, or if he makes an endorsement, it means nothing to us,” said Holmes. “We can very well support the same candidate, or do nothing.”
The Trump-McConnell fight is already falling for 2022 races. Former Representative Mark Walker, who was the first Republican to enter the open race for the Senate in North Carolina, said he disagreed with retiring Republican Sen. Richard Burr’s vote to condemn Trump and called McConnell’s speech criticizing Trump as “unnecessary”.
“I think that, whether he likes it or not, former President Trump will have a lot of impact at least in the Senate contests – perhaps those for the House too – for 2022,” Walker said in an interview.
But Walker said he would be proud to have Trump and McConnell supporting his campaign, although he insisted it was too early to say whether he would support McConnell as leader of the Republican Party.
“My mark for six years is to be a conservative champion and a bridge builder,” he said. “I think that sometimes in DC, people think you have to sacrifice one or the other. But you do not. “
But Trump is making it more difficult for candidates to follow the limits. On Wednesday, while paying tribute to the late conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Fox News, Trump repeated the false claim that he won the election and again went after Republicans for not supporting him.
Democrats looking to expand their incredibly narrow majority in the Senate in 2022 think they can benefit from the push-push between Trump and McConnell, which they see as a party division on major battlegrounds where control of the chamber will be decided.
“It is a pity that it has reached this point to advance a progressive agenda. But I think Democrats should attack while the iron is hot, ”said Tom Nelson, a Democrat running for Johnson’s seat in Wisconsin.
It was only after McConnell published an article in the Wall Street Journal this week criticizing Trump that the former president decided to fight back the Republican leader in the Senate. Trump was not happy with McConnell’s rebuke of Trump over the weekend in the Senate floor, but he saw the article as a bridge too far, according to a person with knowledge of his reaction.
Some Trump advisers have criticized the former president’s side, saying he needs to be more surgical in the way he engages in the primaries against Republican Party presidents. So far, he has focused mainly on House Republicans who supported his impeachment, including MPs Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) And Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), According to people who spoke to him.
But people close to the former president say that McConnell made the biggest mistake in starting the fight, even in voting for absolution. In nudging Trump, they argue, McConnell put the Republicans in a box, forcing them to choose between Trump – who maintains tight control over the party’s base – and McConnell.
So far, advisers to Republicans facing re-election in 2022 say they are betting that Trump’s threats will be a failure – and that with months to go before the election season is in full swing, it’s impossible to know if anything inspired by Trump the primaries will materialize. Republican National Senatorial Committee chairman Rick Scott (R-Florida), who opposed the election results certification in Pennsylvania, has been reluctant to criticize the former president, betting that his support will be necessary for the party to regain a majority.
But the Senate map suggests that Republicans may face headaches in the primaries. The GOP is focused on four seats held by Democrats – Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire – and can find contested primaries in each. Meanwhile, from the top three seats that Democrats are aiming for, Republican Party presidents are retiring in two, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
“The only way to overcome this civil war is to get everyone to focus on the command at 22,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican operative. “Focus on recruiting and presenting candidates based on good Republican policies and ideas, and don’t make a referendum on Trump at all.”