Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is now facing the challenging task of bringing together the GOP after the party’s failure in the midterm elections has led to a lot of criticism being thrown around. On Wednesday, McConnell managed to secure the Senate minority leader, despite the attempts by National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Chairman Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to block him from maintaining his position.
Scott has maintained that McConnell does not have a clear agenda which is what hurt the Republicans during this midterm elections. He also questioned certain decisions made by McConnell, such as having one of the super PACs affiliated with him, the Senate Leadership Fund, withdraw from the Arizona Senate race.
While McConnell did win the leadership race with thirty-seven votes, there were still 11 senators who did not support him. Of those, one voted “present” while the rest voted in support of Scott.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who voted for Scott, had said that the GOP would need to try a different approach, as currently they are not “appealing to working-class independents”. He added that in this election they did not care for President Biden, but when turning to the Republicans they probably thought that they had no idea how they were any better or different. He concluded that they needed to have a serious discussion about where the party was heading and about their convictions.
McConnell said that the three-and-a-half-hour-long debate was extremely productive and it helped them understand what they can do in order to perform better in 2024.
