Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Former President Donald Trump has hit a wall in his efforts to oust Mitch McConnell as GOP leader.<\/p>\n
Despite months of attacks, the Trump-led campaign to depose the Senate minority leader has resulted in firm pledges from just two Republican candidates and no senators, and it has failed to turn up a formidable challenger to run against McConnell.<\/p>\n
Inside the Capitol, conservative senators shrug at the question, revealing a lack of appetite even among the GOP\u2019s anti-establishment wing and continued strong support for McConnell as leader.<\/p>\n
Voters \u201ccare more about what you do as a senator, what you bring up, what you voted against, how you fight for it,\u201d said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who won in 2020 with Trump\u2019s endorsement and believes McConnell is doing \u201ca good job.\u201d<\/p>\n
The former president, who remains critical of McConnell for declining to help him overturn the results of the 2020 election, has ramped up his calls for the Kentucky Republican\u2019s ouster from leadership in recent weeks. This week alone, Trump issued several official statements lambasting McConnell, saying the GOP leader \u201csaved the Democrats\u201d by striking a deal to allow them to raise the debt ceiling, which caused some consternation within the Senate GOP.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow this guy can stay as Leader is beyond comprehension\u2014this is coming not only from me, but from virtually everyone in the Republican Party,\u201d Trump wrote Thursday. \u201cHe is a disaster and should be replaced as \u2018Leader\u2019 ASAP!\u201d<\/p>\n
The barrage of attacks on McConnell have been amplified by Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, who have also gone after the GOP leader on air this fall. Carlson, during a segment last week, announced that his show would begin regularly highlighting problems with McConnell, whom he described as \u201can instrument of the left.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, anti-McConnell sentiment has yet to become a dominant theme on the campaign trail ahead of 2022 elections. Republican campaign staffers in multiple states said their candidates have so far received only one or two questions at events about their support for McConnell \u2014 far short of a rallying cry from the conservative base.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure some consultant\u2019s telling them you\u2019ve got to be anti-establishment,\u201d said Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). \u201cI don\u2019t think most people are going to vote for a candidate based on who they are going to vote for leader.\u201d<\/p>\n
To date, just two prominent GOP Senate candidates have called for McConnell\u2019s ouster \u2014 Kelly Tshibaka, an Alaska Republican who is challenging incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and Eric Greitens, the former governor of Missouri who is running for a seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Roy Blunt.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to see a whole lot of leaders in the Senate, like me, not support Mitch McConnell for leadership because he\u2019s anything but a leader,\u201d said Tshibaka, who is challenging one of Trump\u2019s top targets in the chamber. <\/p>\n
Tshibaka, who made the declaration Monday on Steve Bannon\u2019s \u201cWar Room\u201d podcast, is so far the only Trump-endorsed candidate to publicly reject McConnell. Greitens, who in September became the first 2022 Senate candidate to vow to oppose McConnell as leader, also did it on Bannon\u2019s popular conservative show. Trump has so far not endorsed in the Missouri race. <\/p>\n
In an interview, Murkowski said she supports McConnell\u2019s leadership and disparaged Tshibaka\u2019s tactics: \u201cThere\u2019s probably a national playbook for campaigns; I don\u2019t think Alaskans play by a national playbook.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aside from Tshibaka, Trump-endorsed Senate candidates elsewhere have declined to take the bait on the McConnell issue, suggesting Trump\u2019s now yearlong crusade against the Senate Republican leader has failed to emerge as an effective litmus test in Senate primaries. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s despite Trump\u2019s status as the de facto leader of the Republican Party and his widespread popularity among GOP voters \u2014 83 percent of whom have a favorable opinion of him. McConnell\u2019s favorability rating, by contrast, is 41 percent, according to a new poll from POLITICO and Morning Consult<\/a>.<\/p>\n In North Carolina\u2019s Senate race, Trump-backed Rep. Ted Budd has repeatedly declined to answer whether he supports McConnell. In a statement to POLITICO this week, his campaign adviser, Jonathan Felts, said Budd is focused on winning.<\/p>\n \u201cOur only thought on future leadership elections is that we want to do our part to ensure that the Republican Leader is the majority leader, not the minority leader, so we can stop Joe Biden\u2019s liberal agenda,\u201d Felts said. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, the campaign of Budd\u2019s Republican opponent, former Gov. Pat McCrory, openly praises McConnell\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n \u201cGov. McCrory had a great discussion with Sen. McConnell before deciding to run for the Senate, and he will absolutely support him for leader,\u201d said Jordan Shaw, an adviser on McCrory\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n McConnell declined to comment for this story. When asked Thursday about Trump’s push to replace him as leader, the Kentucky Republican declined to engage, only telling reporters \u201cgood try.\u201d His advisers say the GOP leader is only focused on winning back the majority \u2014 and point out that no one has ever voted against McConnell as leader, a position he has held since 2007. <\/p>\n The last senator to pledge to vote against a party leader, Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, ended up not opposing Chuck Schumer because there was no alternative to consider.<\/p>\n Trump-endorsed Senate candidate Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) \u2014 whom McConnell opposed in a 2017 Senate primary \u2014 told POLITICO earlier this month he wouldn\u2019t rule out supporting McConnell for leader, an election the Republican conference has every two years. But he also made clear McConnell is not his favorite Republican, and he would support McConnell \u201cif he’s the most conservative.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThere are some that he’s more conservative than, and some not,\u201d he added. McConnell’s strength in the GOP was on display at a party lunch on Thursday when he was praised by roughly half the caucus for his leadership, according to a senior Republican aide briefed on the gathering. Conservative Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) touted McConnell’s decision to hold open a Supreme Court seat in 2016, while moderates Murkowski and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) also delivered warm words for McConnell.<\/p>\n Other Republicans trying to distinguish themselves in the crowded Missouri primary \u2014 including Rep. Billy Long, a longtime Trump ally who is angling for an endorsement \u2014 have declined to join Greitens in opposing McConnell, even as the former governor has tried to make it a central issue in the campaign.<\/p>\n \u201cWe believe every candidate running that wants to call themselves MAGA should be asked the question,\u201d said Dylan Johnson, Greitens\u2019 campaign manager. \u201cAre they going to support Mitch McConnell or not?\u201d<\/p>\n Long said in a recent interview that he wouldn’t take that same step.<\/p>\n If Republicans are in the majority \u201cand the only one on the Republican side is Mitch McConnell, you can’t tell me that Eric Greitens is not going to vote for him,\u201d Long said. \u201cI mean, it’s a great talking point. I’ll give it to Eric.\u201d<\/p>\n State Attorney General Eric Schmitt\u2019s campaign did not respond to an inquiry about his position on the GOP leader, while Rep. Vicky Hartzler said in a statement she was \u201cnot beholden to anyone in Washington\u201d and would \u201cvote for leaders who stand up against the liberal madness spewing from a toxic woke minority.\u201d<\/p>\n In Ohio, where Trump has also yet to endorse in the contentious Republican primary, only frontrunner Josh Mandel\u2019s campaign responded to POLITICO\u2019s inquiry about his position on McConnell.<\/p>\n His spokesperson pointed to Mandel\u2019s previous comment about the issue<\/a>, where he questioned whether anyone was running against McConnell and said he wouldn\u2019t \u201centertain hypothetical situations that don\u2019t even exist in reality.\u201d<\/p>\n J.D. Vance, the author of \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d who has recanted his past remarks disparaging Trump and has sought to portray himself as a born-again MAGA devotee, in September told conservative podcast host Jack Murphy he had misgivings about McConnell continuing as leader, but came short of vowing to oppose him.<\/p>\n \u201cI have no idea who should be the majority leader of the Senate,\u201d Vance said on the podcast. \u201cI think that McConnell has clearly shown he\u2019s a little, sometimes a little out of touch with where the base is.\u201d<\/p>\n Later in the interview, Vance said it was \u201ctime we move beyond the very old leadership class that\u2019s dominated the Republican Party for a long time,\u201d though his campaign did not clarify to POLITICO whether he intends to actually vote against McConnell \u2014 who personally encouraged Vance to run for Senate<\/a> in 2018 \u2014 if elected.<\/p>\n Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said candidate announcements about opposing McConnell are \u201cdesigned for an audience of one\u201d: Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been through a few leadership elections here, and I\u2019ve seen a lot of people on the outside try to influence those elections,\u201d Cornyn said. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve never seen it work because people are making their own evaluation based on a lot of different criteria about who they want their leaders to be.\u201d<\/p>\n Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
Tuberville said Brooks is \u201cseeing from the outside of what we\u2019re doing \u2014 he doesn\u2019t see the inside of the meetings and the talks and the strategy and all that.\u201d<\/p>\n