McConnell moves to center ahead of midterms

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is moving to the center ahead of the midterm elections, backing a gun safety measure and insisting he is willing to work with President Biden on middle-of-the-road proposals if Republicans win back the Senate majority in November.

McConnell’s message is aimed squarely at suburban voters, whom he believes will make the difference in battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Such voters moved away from the GOP under former President Trump, but McConnell and Republicans feel they can make inroads in a year where the public is frustrated with high inflation and gas prices.

The push for such voters explains why McConnell risked his A-plus rating with the National Rifle Association (NRA) to back a gun safety measure last week that was opposed by a majority of his conference.

It also was reflected in some of the remarks he made Monday at a Rotary Club lunch in Florence, Ky., where he emphasized that if Biden is willing to come toward him, he is willing to make a deal.

“We have pretty big differences,” McConnell acknowledged. “Whether Joe Biden has the dexterity, shall I say, to pull off a pivot or not, I don’t know, but he won’t have any choice. Because if he wants to be able to function the next few years with divided government, he’ll need to come to the middle.”

Republicans feel increasingly confident they will control the Senate and House next year, given the president’s low approval rating, which has dipped below 40 percent in recent polls. But they are also wary of Democratic arguments that their party is too extreme to govern.

Democrats have sought to make this message through both the hearings of the Jan. 6 committee in the House, which has focused on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, and in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Friday ruling overturning the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion.

McConnell appears to be doing everything he can to make independent and swing voters as comfortable as possible with the GOP, despite the noise coming from Trump — who is often at odds with McConnell — and the huge social upheaval coming from a court that McConnell had a strong hand in putting together.

On Monday, he shut down speculation that Republicans would push a law restricting abortion nationwide if they win control of Congress. Instead, he said state governments would decide future limits on abortion.

“Neither side of this issue has come anywhere close to having 60 votes, so I think this is likely to all be litigated out, dealt with by the various states around the country,” he said.

The GOP leader has pointed out several times in recent weeks that he has worked with Democrats to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, postal reform and legislation to help the United States compete with China, in addition to a $40 billion Ukraine aid bill and the gun safety measure signed into law this weekend.

“I’ve already indicated to you I’m not always opposed to doing bipartisan deals. I’ve done infrastructure, I voted for postal reform and I was one of a minority of my party who voted for this school safety, mental health bill, just last week,” he said Monday.

In backing the gun safety bill, McConnell underscored the need for the GOP to win back suburban voters who left the party under Trump.

“It’s no secret that we lost ground in suburban areas. We pretty much own rural and small-town America, and I think this is a sensible solution to the problem before us, which is school safety and mental health,” he told reporters before voting with 14 other Senate Republicans on Thursday for the gun safety bill.

“I hope it will be viewed favorably by voters in the suburbs we need to regain in order to hopefully be in the majority next year,” he said.

McConnell isn’t going too far in saying he’ll work with Biden, warning the GOP will block more Biden nominees if they take back the Senate.

“If I’m the majority leader, we’ll be really picky on appointees,” he said. “There are 1,200 executive branch appointments that come to us. They’re not all as important as the Supreme Court, but many of them are quite important and [need] to be confirmed by the Senate.”

McConnell also warned Monday that large spending packages will be dead on arrival in a GOP-controlled Senate. Biden spearheaded a $1.9 trillion relief measure in early 2021, and the GOP Senate also backed large spending measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic under Trump in 2020.

And he questioned the conventional wisdom that the president is a moderate politician.

“I know Joe Biden really well. We served together for years. He was never a moderate. He called himself a moderate while he ran for president because he was running against [Sens.] Bernie Sanders [I-Vt.] and Elizabeth Warren [D-Mass.]. Almost everybody is moderate compared to them,” he said.

Scott Jennings, a Kentucky-based GOP strategist who has advised McConnell’s past campaigns, said McConnell has “been pretty clear since the beginning he viewed the 2020 election verdict … as a message to the people to operate between the 40-yard lines.”

“Biden somehow read 2020 as a mandate for a sweeping liberal lurch and look at him now. I think McConnell read it right and Biden wrong,” he said.

The gun safety law McConnell highlighted will enhance background checks for gun buyers younger than 21, give money to states to administer red flag laws and provide billions of dollars for mental health treatment.

It was a remarkable vote, considering the NRA’s opposition. McConnell told reporters last week that he was more concerned about making progress for the country than losing his A-plus rating from the NRA, a somewhat surprising remark from a senator whom Democrats have painted over the past decade as the biggest obstructionist in Washington.

The GOP leader gave the bipartisan negotiations over the bill a boost when he tapped Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), a member of his leadership team, to lead the talks for Republicans.

Senate colleagues viewed that move as a clear sign that McConnell wanted to pass a bill to respond to the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

Shortly before the bill passed the Senate, McConnell revealed that he played a bigger behind-the-scenes role than many people realized. He spoke several times to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), one of the lead Democratic negotiators, and also worked with Cornyn to get the NRA’s input.

While the NRA ultimately released a statement opposing the bill, it did not go on a lobbying blitz to kill the legislation.

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