Club for Growth: McConnell Failed to Hold Biden, Democrats Accountable
(Newsmax/"The Chris Salcedo Show")
By Michael Katz | Friday, 11 November 2022 05:41 PM EST
Mitch McConnell is taking plenty of lumps after an expected Republican red wave in the midterm elections turned into a ripple.
David McIntosh, president of the conservative Club for Growth, said the Senate minority leader from Kentucky failed to make the midterms an indictment of President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats.
"Mitch failed to make this a referendum on why Republicans were better than the Biden agenda and the Democrats, and he knocked down anybody's efforts to have a platform to run on," McIntosh said Wednesday during a news conference, Breitbart reported.
McIntosh's criticism comes on the heels of former President Donald Trump calling McConnell a "lousy leader." And on Friday, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called for a delay in next week's Senate Republican leadership vote, expressing his disappointment in the party's performance in the midterms.
During the news conference, McIntosh said he does not believe McConnell will face a leadership challenge, but said McConnell failed to present a case for Senate Republicans, who are in a dogfight to gain control of the chamber after pundits expected them to pick up at least three seats.
McIntosh, a former U.S. representative from Indiana elected during the Republicans' takeover of Congress in 1994, said many new Senate Republicans elected in 2018 and 2020 are getting "restless" after not being in the majority.
"They don't like serving in the minority," he said. "And they don't see the vision of getting back to the majority. And I think they'll quietly distance themselves from their support of it."
McIntosh said McConnell's "style of campaigning" is "spend money and go back and use that money to try to get yourself elected. It didn't work in a lot of these close races."
Ahead of the midterms, McConnell did not release a legislative agenda of how a Senate Republican majority would operate. Further, the Senate Leadership Fund, a McConnell-aligned super PAC, declined to back Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters and New Hampshire Senate candidate Don Bolduc. Bolduc lost and Masters' race is undecided, although he is trailing Democrat Mark Kelly. The Club for Growth PAC endorsed Masters.