NRSC Chair Silent On Trump-McConnell Feud As Just Two In-Cycle Republicans Express Support For Senate GOP Leader

Where Does Rick Scott Stand On “Vicious” And “Exploding” Party Rift Between Minority Leader And Former President?

With a series of new reports examining the political fallout of the civil war between Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and former President Donald Trump, Rick Scott’s silence as NRSC Chair has become deafening. As he keeps one eye on his own 2024 presidential aspirations, Scott is laying low — trying to calculate how to appease increasingly unpopular Senate GOP leadership while placating the party’s Trump-aligned base in 2022.

POLITICO asked all 16 Republican senators running for re-election if they supported McConnell as caucus leader, and “only two responded” — while vulnerable GOP senators Ron Johnson, Marco Rubio, and Roy Blunt all declined to express support. A Republican operative told the Washington Post that the Trump-McConnell divide over primaries “has the potential to be a very large headache for GOP Senate candidates,” while other Republican strategists told the Associated Press the “exploding feud” could be a “direct threat” to the party’s Senate chances. The New York Times reported that McConnell’s “miscalculation” in strategy has left him “on the defensive” and at risk of becoming “a full-blown pariah for Senate candidates.”

“The fact that the Chair of the NRSC and 14 in-cycle Senate Republicans won’t defend Mitch McConnell against Donald Trump’s attacks is a stunning start to a cycle already rife with retirements and primary headaches,” said DSCC spokesperson Stewart Boss. “Rick Scott and other Republicans are desperate to hide their stance because they know the party is bitterly divided between McConnell’s toxic Washington politics and Trump’s unhinged conspiracy theories, but they can’t have it both ways.”

POLITICO: Trump-McConnell rift threatens GOP’s Senate hopes

• Republicans are starting their life in the Senate minority mired in a civil war over the future of the GOP and former President Donald Trump’s role in the party.

• Following Trump’s call for Republicans to move on from McConnell, POLITICO on Wednesday reached out to all 16 Republican senators running for reelection in 2022 to ask if they supported the Kentuckian as majority leader. Only two responded.

• The Trump-McConnell spat is already trickling down to 2022 races. Former Rep. Mark Walker, who was the first Republican to enter the open North Carolina Senate race, said he disagreed with retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr’s vote to convict Trump and called McConnell’s speech criticizing Trump “unnecessary.”

• But people close to the former president say it’s McConnell who made the bigger mistake by starting the fight, even in voting for acquittal. In poking Trump, they argue, McConnell put Republicans in a box, forcing them to choose between Trump — who maintains an iron-like grip on the party’s base — and McConnell.

• National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who opposed the certification of the election results in Pennsylvania, has been reluctant to criticize the former president, betting that his support will be needed in order for the party to reclaim the majority.

• But the Senate map suggests that Republicans could face primary headaches. The GOP is focused on four Democratic-held seats — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire — and could encounter contested primaries in each. Meanwhile, of the top three seats Democrats are targeting, GOP incumbents are retiring in two of them, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

New York Times: McConnell’s Strategy Has Party in Turmoil and Trump on Attack

• The strategy… did not exactly produce the desired result. Instead, it has drawn Mr. McConnell into a vicious feud with the former president, who lashed out at him on Tuesday as a “dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack,” and given new cause for Republican division that could spill into the midterm elections. And it has left some Republicans bewildered over Mr. McConnell’s strategy and others taking a harder line, saying the leader whose focus was always the next election had hurt the party’s 2022 prospects.

• The miscalculation has left Mr. McConnell in an unusual place — on the defensive, with Mr. Trump pressing for his ouster, and no easy way to extricate himself from the political bind.

• Mr. Johnson, who is weighing running for re-election next year in a highly competitive battleground state, said support for Mr. McConnell was already emerging as a negative factor among Trump-backing Republican primary voters he speaks with back home. He said the minority leader risked becoming a full-blown pariah for Senate candidates if he did not move quickly toward unifying the party.

• Mr. Johnson said Republicans cannot win without the ardent Trump supporters now alienated by Mr. McConnell’s denunciation of Mr. Trump. He lumped the Republican leader in with the Lincoln Project and other anti-Trump Republicans who tried to “purge” the party of Trumpism. “They are not perceiving reality,” he said.

Associated Press: Trump-McConnell feud threatens Republicans’ path to power

• Leading GOP strategists described the exploding feud between the former Republican president and the Senate’s most powerful Republican as, at best, a distraction and, at worst, a direct threat to the party’s path to the House and Senate majorities in next year’s midterms.

• The former president hurled a series of personal insults at McConnell in a fiery written statement Tuesday. Mainstream Republicans were perhaps most concerned about his threat to support primary challengers against Republican candidates who don’t fully embrace his “Make America Great Again” philosophy.

• The Senate Republican campaign arm, led by Florida Sen. Rick Scott, will not get involved in open primaries. But McConnell’s advisers have not ruled out the possibility — even if it draws Trump’s ire.

Washington Post: Trump-McConnell clash threatens to settle into a cold war as GOP eyes midterms

• The clash between the two men stands to define the Republican Party for years to come and was sketched out in a recent series of dramatic public attacks — with McConnell labeling Trump as “practically and morally responsible” for the Capitol riot in a Saturday speech, followed by Trump lashing into McConnell in a Tuesday statement as a “dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack” who should be stricken from GOP leadership.

• Many Trump advisers believe he is wise to target McConnell as a wildly unpopular symbol of the GOP establishment — and some believe Trump can push McConnell from power.

• “It has the potential to be a very large headache for GOP Senate candidates,” said a Republican operative who worked on the 2020 Senate races…

• McConnell’s political standing, meanwhile, is also in flux. In Kentucky, several county Republican committees have moved to rebuke him following his denunciation of Trump. The chairman of one county party wrote McConnell on Tuesday, demanding that he resign his leadership position over “your complete and total disdain for the will of your constituents.”

• “I think he’s stirred up the hornets nest even worse. There are people that are more mad now, because it just seems kind of duplicitous to a lot of people,” said Don Thrasher, the Nelson County GOP chairman. “He is trying to straddle the fence, and he is not making anybody happy doing that.”

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