U.S. President Donald Trump departs with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Mike Pence after addressing a closed Senate Republican policy lunch as a partial government shutdown enters its 19th day on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 9, 2019. REUTERS/Jim Young
Republicans don’t want Kris Kobach and Roy Moore running for Senate, but if they capture the party’s nominations, it will be a nightmare that could hand the Senate to Democrats.
As CNN’s Chris Cillizza pointed out:
Meet Kris Kobach and Roy Moore.
Both men are running for the Senate as Republicans — Kobach in Kansas, a candidacy he made official on Monday, and Moore in Alabama. And both men, if they wind up as the Republican nominees in their respective states, have a very real chance of losing a general election to a Democrats — despite the heavily Republican nature of both states.
Which would be a stunning blow to Senate Republicans’ majority math and would amount to the ultimate cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face move for a party which has proven to be skilled at self-sabotage — especially in the Senate in recent elections. And while neither Kobach nor Moore starts their races as prohibitive favorites, it’s not all that hard to see one or both of them winding up as the nominee.
The same anti-GOP establishment Republicans who flocked to Donald Trump in 2015-16 are attracted to Roy Moore and Kris Kobach for the same reason. The Republican establishment already has preferred nominees in Alabama and Kansas, and immediately rejected the candidacies of Kobach and Moore. This rejection only helps the candidates that the party wants to see defeated in the eyes of many of their own voters.
Kobach and Moore actually become more popular candidates because they were rejected by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Republican strategists were counting on easily beating Sen. Doug Jones in Alabama as a firewall for keeping the Senate in 2020, but what if Jones beats Roy Moore again? Kris Kobach just lost a race for governor and became the first Republican to lose statewide in Kansas in almost ten years. It is very possible that both these men who just lost statewide races lose again in 2020. That leaves Democrats one seat short of Senate control if they take back the White House, and that seat could come from knocking off Sen. Susan Collins in Maine.
Democrats could defeat Trump and remove Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader in the same election.
Democrats have a chance to get rid of both Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell thanks to Roy Moore and Kris Kobach.
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