In July, 2017 Politico reported that Mitch McConnell was unleashing the full force of his political machine in an all-out push to stop two “far-right conservatives who threaten to make his life miserable in the Senate”.
Politico’s idea of far-right conservatives is all conservatives. They were correct about one thing though, McConnell didn’t want them in the Senate bucking him. Mo Brooks, an early contender in the Primary, made a fatal error in McConnell’s view when he said he would not vote for McConnell as majority leader and called for him to step down after the failure of the health care bill.
By July, McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund has spent $3.5 million on the race, by far the largest expenditure of any outside group. It was mostly spent on damaging Mo Brooks, who was seen as the most serious contender to McConnell’s pick Luther Strange.
Instead of letting Alabamans decide, McConnell chose to influence the election, much as he hard left influenced the election after the Primary.
McConnell’s super PAC spent more than $8 million to boost Strange and annihilate the opposition in the Primary. There was the sprawling donor network and the resources he could pull from the White House. And the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP campaign arm McConnell controls, warned consultants they’ll be cut off from future work if they assist Strange’s opponents.
That was a direct threat to Mo Brooks and his hold over his House seat.
One of McConnell’s top political lieutenants had even begun quietly advising a long-shot Republican primary candidate running for Brooks’ House seat. That was to get in the congressman’s head and dissuade him from emptying his campaign war chest in the race for Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old Senate seat.
The McConnell group’s assault against Brooks was described by Politico as “blistering”. They used comments Brooks made against the President before Trump won the Primary and hurt him among Alabamans where Trump is wildly popular. There was a TV ad they ran night and day in which Brooks is heard saying he thought candidate Trump was untrustworthy.
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The intent was to make people think Brooks would not support the President’s agenda when in fact, the Progressive Democrat who McConnell obviously preferred to Brooks or Moore, won’t support any of the President’s agenda.
RINOs hate conservatives more than they hate Progressives although McConnell will tell you he’s a conservative.
Polling showed the attacks worked and Brooks came in a distant third to Strange, leaving Alabamans with the morally compromised Strange or the more right-wing Moore. That was before the hard-left unleashed the hounds of Hell against Moore. No one had ever heard of these sexual allegations, despite Moore having run for office eight times before.
McConnell had just begun his assault against Brooks.
Republican strategist Ward Baker, a McConnell ally, whom the leader hand-picked to serve as NRSC executive director during the 2016 campaign, was offering guidance, free of charge, to Clayton Hinchman, a 34-year-old, West Point-educated Iraq War veteran who had launched a primary campaign against Brooks for his north Alabama congressional seat.
Hinchman also claimed Brooks was disloyal to the president though there was no evidence of that and despite Brooks offering full allegiance to Trump after the Primary.
In an interview, Brooks said he believed McConnell’s fingerprints were all over Hinchman’s campaign. Brooks said the leader had engaged in a systematic effort to “strong-arm” and “bully” candidates opposing Strange.
“Alabama voters are starting to develop a strong dislike for Mitch McConnell and the establishment machine that thinks they have a right to dictate to the people of Alabama whether a person can qualify as a candidate and who voters would vote for,” Brooks said.
In May, Brooks tried to talk with McConnell to discuss Strange’s ethical issues but was rebuked. [Strange had been investigating then-Gov. Bentley when Bentley appointed him so he could in turn exonerate him – Bentley – or so it seemed.]
“I don’t know if he cares or not,” Brooks said. “I know that he denied me the opportunity to meet with him to share this information.”
On August 10th, Breitbart quoted Brooks who warned that the “negative politics” of Luther Strange and the ads/funds from the Senate’s leadership fund could result in a Democrat win, which is exactly what happened.
“When you had Mitch McConnell and his swamp critters trying to intimidate people into not running in the first instance back in April and May, followed by Mitch McConnell and the swamp critters spending millions upon millions of dollars attacking Roy Moore and myself in a deceitful and false way coupled with the impact of how Luther Strange’s negative politics has opened the way for Democrats possibly to win this election in December. People are angry and angry people are more likely to vote,” he continued.
All the blame going around and the worst culprit of all has been ignored – the seriously flawed leader of the Senate is largely to blame. This is a man who has been given over 300 bills by the House and has nearly 300 left. Most bills never even make it to the floor.
One must wonder why he doesn’t expend some of that negative energy he has to take away leadership roles from people like Susan Collins, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker and John McCain, who have an unnatural preference for Democrats and their policies.
Sadly, Mo Brooks has been diagnosed with a particularly virulent form of prostrate cancer and the prognosis is not known. What we do know is that Brooks would have fully supported the President’s agenda. He would have fought for it and Jones will fight against it. If the left has anyone to thank for their win, it’s Mitch McConnell.
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