The leader of the Republican minority of the Senate of the United States, Mitch McConnell, has blamed this Tuesday the power exercised by former President Donald Trump in the Republican primaries for the problems of “quality of the candidates” with which his party struggled in the elections. mid-term legislatures.
Speaking to reporters a week after Republicans lost the Senate runoff in Georgia, which expanded the Senate’s Democratic majority to 51 seats, McConnell has claimed his party was hampered by “weak candidates” in several of the states. in which the elections were held.
“We ended up having a quality (problem) of the candidates (…) Look at Arizona, look at New Hampshire and also a challenging situation in Georgia,” stressed the leader of the Republican minority in the Senate, mentioning states in which the candidates Republicans were chosen by Trump, according to ‘The Hill’.
“Our ability to control the results of the primaries was quite limited because the support of the former president turned out to be very decisive in these primaries, so, in my opinion, something better should have been done with the cards that were dealt,” he said. on the result in the Upper House.
The Republican Party chose in its primaries to vote for candidates who had Trump’s support, such as Herschel Walker, who lost last week to Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia.
“Hopefully, in the next cycle, we will have quality candidates everywhere and a better result,” said the Republican politician.
Meanwhile, McConnell has reported that he never predicted the “red wave” that some of his colleagues predicted, in allusions to the forecast that the Republicans would obtain a great victory in the ‘midterms’, according to the aforementioned newspaper.
In addition, the Senate minority leader has argued that some Republicans have forgotten “the lessons of the 2010 and 2012 elections,” when the GOP lost good opportunities to win races in states like Delaware, Indiana and Missouri because of extremist Republican candidates. or controversial won the primaries of those years.
“I think we had the opportunity to learn once again that you have to have quality candidates to win competitive races for the Senate (…) We went through this in 2010 and 2012”, he stressed.
