Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) re-election campaign has a response for the Senate Conservatives Fund’s (SCF) accusation that McConnell rolled over as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) changed Senate filibuster rules: that’s “profoundly stupid.”
“That argument is so profoundly stupid that it is hard to fully ascertain whether their deficiency is in math or logic,” McConnell campaign spokeswoman Allison Moore told TPM on Friday. “It does however help further illuminate why SCF is so bad at what they do.”
“What’s stupid is for Mitch McConnell to think that appeasement is a winning strategy,” Senate Conservatives Fund executive director Matt Hoskins said to TPM in response to Moore.
Moore’s statement on Friday is in response to a fundraising email from SCF, which is backing McConnell primary challenger Matt Bevin, arguing that Reid was able to enact the “nuclear option” removing the filibuster option from judicial and executive nominees.
“Harry Reid did this because he knows Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will let him get away with it,”Hoskins wrote in an email to supporters Friday. “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.”
The original statements by both Moore and Hoskins come a day after the Senate rules change. Right after the rules change Bevin’s campaign released a similarly critical statement of McConnell.
“Kentuckians deserve better than a pretend leader who does nothing more than wave his arms for the cameras,” Bevin said in a statement referring to McConnell.
This post has been updated.
