Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had an eye on November 2014 on Thursday.
Senate Democrats pushed through the nuclear option that morning, curtailing the use of the filibuster and drastically curbing the power of the minority. McConnell pointed to the next Congress as a time when he hoped that he, as the new Senate majority leader, could make a Democratic minority shoulder the consequences of that action.
But on Friday, a conservative group blamed McConnell and what they said was his “weakness” as a minority leader for allowing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to go nuclear.
Senate Conservatives Fund, an outside group who is backing McConnell’s primary opponent in Kentucky, political newcomer Matt Bevin, blasted McConnell Friday saying the rule change was his fault.
“Harry Reid did this because he knows Republican Leader Mitch McConnell will let him get away with it,” SCF Executive Director Matt Hoskins wrote in an email to the group’s supporters.
“The only way to deter a nuclear attack is to make it clear that the response will be equally devastating. Unfortunately, weakness is the only message Mitch McConnell has sent the Democrats on this issue,” Hoskins wrote.
McConnell’s campaign dismissed that argument as sheer idiocy.
“That argument is so profoundly stupid that it is hard to fully ascertain whether their deficiency is in math or logic,” said McConnell campaign communications director Allison Moore. “It does however help further illuminate why SCF is so bad at what they do.”
Twice already this year, in the face of Democratic threats to invoke the nuclear option after Republicans blocked nominees, the two parties have struck deals to avert the rule change, something Senate Conservatives Fund — which has repeatedly hit McConnell for his role in deals with Democrats, like the fiscal cliff deal on New Year’s Eve —
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