Beltway “riddle-solver” Chris Wallace, who somehow still has a job in the news industry after the CNN+ debacle, is chiming in on Mitch McConnell’s seemingly defeatist attitude about GOP prospects for regaining control of the U.S. Senate.
(Video: CNN)
A few days ago, the Senate Minority Leader (R-Ky.) lamented “candidate quality” as factor and suggested that it is now more likely that the House flips back to Republican control in the November elections.
The subtext of McConnell’s remarks is that he is apparently more comfortable with establishment or RINO candidates rather than “less electable” America First MAGA nominees.
With that on the table, Wallace suggested that McConnell might indeed be throwing shade on Trump endorsees.
CNN “New Day” co-host John Berman teed it up for colleague Wallace on Friday morning by pointing out that “Mitch McConnell is not a man of many words or few words, but precise words, like each word carefully chosen. So why is he telling us this now?”
Wallace replied: “Well, you know, I’ve been sort of riddling that myself over the last 24 hours. You’re exactly right. McConnell doesn’t say what a single, unguarded thing, and you would think, even if he believes that Republicans are in trouble in taking back the Senate, why would he say that? It’s certainly not going to be good for fundraising…”
The former host of “Fox News Sunday,” during which his tenure raised a lot of questions about journalism quality, offered two theories in the video clip embedded above: “One, hoping that it’ll get those Republican candidates and their donor base energized again, not to take the idea that the Senate is going to go with the House and flip to Republicans.
“And two maybe to take a shot at Donald Trump, because it seems that a lot of these races, Herschel Walker in Georgia, Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, that President Trump, in terms of his endorsements and his backing, went more for a celebrity than he did for candidate experience, political experience. A lot of these people are being dismissed as amateur candidates.”
McConnell seemingly swipes at Trump with snide ‘candidate quality’ remark https://t.co/0ecHhsihwN
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) August 19, 2022
In a example of how the inane D.C. corporate media is obsessed with trivia, Wallace then highlighted a gaffe made by Dr. Oz — who, like him or not, is reportedly campaigning tirelessly across the Keystone State — during a video filmed in the produce department of a supermarket chain.
Berman’s liberal co-host Brianna Keilar surprisingly pointed out that the gaffe video was recycled content and that Oz’s far-left rival John Fetterman is “facing some of his own questions about his health…”
Claiming that Senate elections are more personality driven than those in the House, Wallace went on to say that “I think there is an argument that this is a bad year for Democrats; there’s a lot of reasons — the right direction, wrong direction is heavily negative for Democrats. Joe Biden’s approval ratings are still around 40%, way under water, so if Republicans fail to pick up the Senate at this point, you could argue, whether it’s Trump or something else, that it’s on the Republicans themselves. And it will also probably as a statement about Mitch McConnell’s deep-felt desire. There is nothing he wants more than to regain the position of Senate majority leader and among other things that would allow him to block Biden legislation and especially Biden nominees to the various courts.”
Parenthetically, perceptive right-leaning analysts, among them Rich Baris, “The People’s Pundit,” have suggested that Senate polling data hyped by the corporate media is flawed.
Mollie Hemingway, the editor-in-chief of The Federalist, called out pouty McConnell for political malpractice after his much-publicized remarks:
Unnecessarily ceding an incredibly winnable Senate to Democrats three months before an election is a great example of the leadership choices that have led McConnell to be the least popular national politician in the country, according to the RealClearPolitics average. And it’s a good example of why so many Republicans — grateful as they may be for his successes — think it’s time for new leaders…The country is 18 months into Democrats’ total rule, and by nearly every measure the results of their political control are utterly disastrous…
And in this milieu, Republican voters who care deeply about their country have chosen a slate of extremely interesting candidates, many of them non-career politicians. Particularly compared to the crop of senators currently in Washington, they are all extremely talented and impressive people. This is something to highlight and praise, not lament. Having non-career politicians running is a good thing, not a bad thing,
Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, J.D. Vance, and Blake Masters are successful and impressive people in a variety of careers. Even the more traditional politicians running for re-election — Ron Johnson and Marco Rubio — are among the better senators in office. Adam Laxalt, running against an incumbent Nevada Democrat, is a highly decorated former Naval officer and Iraq War veteran. He was an incredibly successful attorney general in Nevada.
These are not bad candidates! If you can’t work with this level of quality, you can’t work with anyone…It is political malpractice to pout and run them — and the voters who selected them — down…”
In his freewheeling style, Former President Trump also weighed in McConnell’s statements via his Truth Social platform:
“Why do Republicans Senators allow a broken-down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard working Republican candidates for the United States Senate. This is such an affront to honor and to leadership. He should spend more time (and money!) helping them get elected, and less time helping his crazy wife and family get rich on China!”
Trump blasts ‘broken down political hack’ Mitch McConnell for doubting Republicans retake Senate https://t.co/LHDMPVxWD3
— American Wire News (@americanwire_) August 21, 2022
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Robert Jonathan is a staff writer for BizPac Review. He is a longtime writer/editor for news aggregation websites and has also developed content in the legal and financial publishing sectors as well as for online education. He earned a Juris Doctorate from the University of Connecticut School of Law, “a law school the basketball teams can be proud of.”
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