While the Republican National Committee has been busy trying to downplay the violent tactics used by their supporters on January 6th 2021, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel broke rank and called January 6th for what it was: a violent insurrection that needs to be stopped.
The RNC has recently censured both Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney for their cooperation and participation in the January 6th committee. They did this because the RNC made the decision to call the january 6th insurrection, “legitimate political discourse.” Which it wasn’t.
And McConnell realizes this fact
In fact, way back to last year, directly after January 6th, McConnel has broke ranks with fellow Republicans in Congress, issuing a statement that called a violent insurrection.
And that’s what he did again now in 2022, saying, “It was a violent insurrection with the purpose of trying to prevent a peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election. That’s what it was.”
The matter-of-fact nature of these statements underscores McConnell’s attempts to distance himself from certain members of the GOP, especially Trump.
McConnell continued about the censure, “This issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different views from the majority. That’s not the job of the RNC.”
McConnell had also reportedly worked behind the scenes with now-President Joe Biden to ensure that the exiting president didn’t create more turmoil after losing re-election.
According to Business Insider, McConnell expected Trump to lose and had been grumbling to aides that “there were so many Maalox moments during the four years” under Trump, and things did not get any better after the election, according to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book “Peril.”
With that in mind, McConnell was concerned about keeping the two Georgia Senate seats in a run-off, so he contacted Biden through Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) and pleaded with him to refrain from calling Trump at all costs.
“McConnell worried Trump might react negatively and upend the upcoming, hotly contested runoff Senate elections in Georgia,” the book states according to Business Insider. “He also said he did not want Biden, a serial telephone user, to call him. Any call from Biden was sure to infuriate Trump and set off unwanted calls from him, asking if he believed Biden had won the presidency.”
“To keep things under wraps, McConnell reached out to GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas to speak privately with Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a Biden confidant, about a ‘back channel’ for the then-majority leader to have a level of communication with the president-elect. Cornyn said that the senators were ‘in a delicate situation since Trump may have assumed that the men were ‘cutting a deal behind his back to cut him out,’ which would make him ‘even more irrational,” the re[prt adds.
Despite the fact that McConnell had been a governing partner with Trump, shepherding through three Supreme Court justices and scores of appeals judges, as well as passing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and other conservative priorities, he still had to deal with the wildly unpredictable president, who could kill a bill as easily as sell it to conservatives.
It remains to be seen how McConnell’s rebuke of the RNC’s censure decision, as well as Trump’s stronghold on the party, will play out during this November 2022 election cycle.
As of right now, it shows the Republican party as divided and not organized. Which may mean that the Democrats keep power in all government facets.
