Opinion: What it takes for Republicans to abandon Trump

Last month, McConnell acknowledged that Republicans were more likely to win control of the House than the Senate, citing the quality of candidates, with some endorsed by Trump and Scott playing a role in the recruitment. “The Senate election is completely different. It is statewide and the quality of the candidate has a lot to do with the outcome,” McConnell said. Said.

Scott then published editorial At last week’s Washington Examiner, he accused Republicans of “trashtalking our Republican candidate.” He added, “This is an amazing act of cowardice and, ultimately, an act of treason against a conservative cause.” (Scott later rejected His words were directed at McConnell.)

Scott supports the candidate, but many commentators agree with McConnell, claiming former President Donald Trump ran for the midterms. some approval inexperienced ineligible candidate Those who are currently struggling to move forward. Mehmet Oz’s campaign for Pennsylvania’s Lt. Gov. John Fetterman has stalled, and former football star Herschel Walker is running against incumbent Georgia Senator Rafael Warnock and best-selling author JD Vance. there is discreet campaign Ohio.

Scott’s spending habits didn’t help either. Large hauls at an early stagethe NRSC is currently underfunded due to significant spending to find new online donors. unpaid, according to the New York Times. (NRSC spokesman defends strategy, “It’s working,” he said.)

The disagreements that erupted between Scott and McConnell reveal what drives the Senate Minority Leadership and what may ultimately lead to change within the Republican Party.

McConnell is part of a generation of Republicans shaped by the partisanship that Newt Gingrich made famous in the 1980s. The need for governance and the health of our democratic institutions has increasingly lagged behind a guardrail-less approach to partisan warfare. Almost anything was permissible. It was about how far I was willing to go for it.

But Trump will only be useful to McConnell if the former president has the ability to vote Republican. With several Senate seats hanging in the balance in a year that should have been an easy victory for the Republicans, McConnell is likely to reconsider the Republican Party’s strategy going forward.

This is an important moment. Democracy behaves according to traditional rules of governance He believes it is healthier to have two parties Many Americans have repeatedly questioned what it takes for the Republican Party to change. I was.

The answer is clear. For a Republican like McConnell to move forward and demand his party take a new approach, it will take a series of heavy losses that keep the Democrats in control of Congress and the White House.

But until it becomes clear that Trump is the dead weight pulling the Republican party down, we hear only occasional complaints from Republicans like McConnell. , with politicians like Governor Rick DeSantis of Florida and Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, we are likely to see more politicians embodying a more sophisticated version of the former. president.