With a little over two months to go until the midterms, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY.) and the chair of the GOP’s Senate campaign arm Senator Rock Scott (R-FL.), simmering tensions have boiled over into the public arena.
For months McConnell and many other Republicans have privately raised concerns about the roster of Senate candidates and their ability to reclaim the Senate majority.
But as concerns have become more apparent, Scott’s begun to dig in his heels.
On Thursday (September 1), an interview with Scott was published by POLITICO in which he declared he and McConnell had a “strategic disagreement” about the GOP’s Senate candidates.
Also on Thursday, the Washington Examiner published an op-ed by Scott; in it, he accuses “the very people responsible for losing the Senate last cycle” of “trash-talking our Republican candidates.”
Despite not mentioning explicitly naming McConnell in the op-ed, Scott is clearly discussing the Kentucky Senator.
He continued his scathing rebuke of McConnell, writing in the op-ed, “If you want to talk about the need to raise more money to promote our candidates versus the Democrats’ terrible candidates, I agree. If you want to trash-talk our candidates to help the Democrats, pipe down.”
He added, “That’s not what leaders do.”
Until recently, McConnell has been openly pessimistic about the GOP’s ability to reclaim victory in the Senate, blaming “candidate quality” for this and adding, “there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate.”
