Republicans on Capitol Hill are on the verge of a mutiny vs. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
From Politico:
Vulnerable Republicans have a clear message for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: no deal, no recess.
With talks between the White House and Democratic leadership at an impasse, Senate Republicans up in November are pressing for the chamber to stay in session until some agreement is reached.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas argued that it would “look like a dereliction of duty” for the Senate to go home without clinching a deal as millions of Americans face economic catastrophe. “The COVID-19 response is going to be an important part of the 2020 election. It’s obviously not going away,” he added. “It will be a looming factor.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said, “Suffice it to say that if we can’t get this done in the midst of a persistent pandemic then we have failed the American people. And I am optimistic that we will be able to get it done.”
Though McConnell expressed, “If you’re looking for a total consensus among Republican senators, you’re not going to find it. So you do have divisions about what to do.”
A handful of fiscal hawks are accusing their vulnerable colleagues of seeking additional spending simply to boost their re-election prospects. But that conventional wisdom could backfire, they say. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) stated, “There will be a certain portion of our Republican electorate at the very least who says, we thought we were not the party of borrow and spend, we thought that was the other guys. And so I think there is a danger of dampening the turnout of your base, sending them to vote for a third party or them staying home because they’re disturbed that Republicans are acting like Democrats.”
Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.Senator Todd Young of Indiana claimed, “To the extent [Speaker of the House] Nancy Pelosi and the far left remain resistant to constructive solutions and insistent upon three and a half trillion dollars of far-left priorities, I think that will be advantageous to our Republican candidates.”
While GOP Sen. John Kennedy from Louisiana declared, “Most voters are looking at what’s been going on up here the last 30 days and they concluded it’s an abject, moron-a-thon and they’re not impressed. Nor do I think they should be. I think it will hurt both the Republicans and Democrats, and it should.”
