Mitch McConnell Suggests Republicans Could ‘Screw Up’ Senate Midterms if They Nominate Candidates Who Are ‘Sort of Unacceptable to a Broader Group of People’

At a Kentucky chamber event yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) spoke about the midterm elections.

McConnell suggested that Republicans could “screw up” the Senate midterms if they nominate candidates who are “sort of unacceptable to a broader group of people.”

“From an atmospheric point of view, it’s a perfect storm of problems for the Democrats. How could you screw this up? It’s actually possible. And we’ve had some experience with that in the past,” McConnell claimed.

McConnell then noted that “In the Senate, if you look at where we have to compete in order to get into a majority, there are places that are competitive in the general election.”

“So you can’t nominate somebody who’s just sort of unacceptable to a broader group of people and win. We had that experience in 2010 and 2012,” McConnell insisted.

MSNBC’s Steve Benen pointed out that in the first midterm cycle of the Obama era, 2010 Republicans took control of the House, but not the Senate.

Democrats lost seats but were able to hold onto the Senate thanks in part to GOP primary voters nominating what Benen described as “some outlandish and unelectable candidates.”

Benen pointed to Senate races that happened that year where candidates like Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell and Nevada’s Sharron Angle were the nominees.

Of course, Benen blamed the nominees for the failures in those races, rather than the fact that RINOs refused to back them.

Two years later, Democrats gained Senate seats, thanks, as Benen put it “in part to Republican nominees such as Missouri’s Todd Akin and Indiana’s Richard Mourdock.”

Again, both Akin and Mourdock were stabbed in the back by RINOs, this time over statements they had made that championed more conservative positions during the campaign.

.@LeaderMcConnell on the 2022 midterms: "How could you screw this up? It's actually possible. […] In the Senate, if you look at where we have to compete in order to get into a majority, there are places that are competitive in the general election." https://t.co/pevgKhkPwm pic.twitter.com/eHRBVGRjQF

— The Hill (@thehill) April 13, 2022