Brooks: ‘Maybe Mitch McConnell’s Job Should Not be Secure’

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks suggested that maybe Senate Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) shouldn’t have a secure job as leader.

Brooks said, “The thing I think we learned this week is that Roy Moore and Steve Bannon, what we’ll call the nationalists, they have a story to tell. They have a story about the country and why it’s going astray. They have a story about what’s wrong with Washington and the swamp and why it needs to be drained. The regular Republicans, the Mitch McConnell Republicans, have no story. And they thought they could hold off the nationalists with money, and with logistics and with party organization. And I think one of the things we’ve learned is they can’t do that, that if you want to hold off Steve Bannon, you actually have to have an argument, you have to have a story about why his kind of Republican is the wrong kind. And they don’t have that. And if they don’t have it in Alabama, they’re probably not going to have it in Tennessee, and they may not have it in Wyoming, and they may not have it in Arizona, and all the other states where Republicans are up for grabs, at least in the Senate, in 2018.”

He later added, “I do think Republicans — right now, the establishment Republicans are frozen in fear, and they’re just trying not to be the next target. But I think, if I were them, I’d say, how do we get out in front of this thing? Maybe Mitch McConnell’s not the face of establishment Republican Party. Maybe we do have to have a new leader, somebody who can actually speak to the country. And maybe we do have to have a story to tell. And maybe Mitch McConnell’s job should not be secure, because the hatred toward Mitch McConnell, while I think 50% unearned, is vituperative and not going anywhere. And so, if every Republican has to really run as Mitch McConnell’s partner, that’s going to be a problem for a lot of Republicans in the primaries.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett