This isn’t being said enough. Blame Trump all you want, but he wasn’t on the ballot. This was the Republicans’ race to lose, and the party leadership bears the blame. McCarthy tries to present himself as a populist but most view him with distrust as they should. We shouldn’t be questioning if we will even win the House, that was supposed to be a forgone conclusion. But if we win it, McCarthy should not be rewarded for this disastrous underperformance. Beneath him, Tom Emmer is the chair of the NRCC; he’s the guy in charge of the cash. The NRCC directed millions into D+20 districts from California to Michigan, rather than the tossups that Republicans should have been guaranteed to pick up. This alone was pure incompetence at best and sabotage at worst.
McConnell on the other hand is clearly an establishment crony with preference for loyalty and backdoor deals with Democrats than supporting America First candidates. We need to remember that its McConnell who poured millions of dollars into Colorado and Alaska, one being a race where the Republicans never could’ve won, and the other to save Lisa Murkoswki whose own state party has censured her. Murkowski votes for Biden 67% of the time, and no matter what happens in Alaska, a Republican will still win it; there’s no reason to dump money over there. Furthermor, McConnell refused to support Masters in Arizona, he refused to support Bolduc in New Hampshire, and he left Walker out to dry. Once these guys announced they wouldn’t support McConnell for Senate Majority Leader, McConnell pulled out the cash. He’d rather stay in power as a minority leader than have the majority for the American people. This was the ultimate dereliction of leadership.
I’m not saying Trump is or isn’t partly responsible for what happened this midterm. But McCarthy and McConnell are our coaches, and we just fumbled hard. When you’re the coach of a team and you fail to win when everything is pointing to victory, that coach gets fired. Say what you want about candidate quality or messaging, but we need to clean house; McCarthy and McConnell need to go.