Although he has been a Republican leader in the Senate for almost two decades, Mitch McConnell's days of authority might be numbered.
Several key Senate Republicans, speaking exclusively to The Daily Caller on Wednesday, expressed reservations Senate Minority Leader McConnell, R-Ky., was the right figure to lead the party's ambitions going forward following the recent border bill debacle.
"Mitch McConnell, in effect, gave the largest in-kind campaign contribution to the Democrats' Senate campaign committee in history," Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told The Daily Caller.
"Every single Democrat candidate in the country running for Senate, running for House will use the identical talking points — they will all say: We wanted to secure the border. We tried to secure the border, but the Republicans wouldn't let us," Cruz said. "Now, that is a wild-eyed lie. It is completely false. This bill would have made the border crisis worse."
Although McConnell is well-versed in Senate maneuvering and processes, he has been outside the Republican base on their key issues for some time — border security and illegal immigration being at the top of that list.
"I think this is our opportunity to take him out, and we're sort of working to figure out if that's possible," according to one Republican senator, granted anonymity by The Daily Caller.
"As long as I've been serving in the Senate, there's never been an issue where the American public is so overwhelmingly in support of our position, which is to secure the border.
"So how can you take — as leader — how do you take an issue where the American people support us and lead us into a box, where now, when a bill is produced, it is worse than doing nothing," Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said. "When that's rejected, we get blamed. I mean, you got to work overtime to screw that up."
Every senator who spoke with The Daily Caller let it be known McConnell was the deal-maker with the Democrats and not Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., whom McConnell chose to handle the negotiations.
Lankford is not running for reelection so was deemed an ideal candidate if the bill failed — which it did.
"I've even heard privately, Democratic colleagues tell me, 'Your leadership was desperate to make a deal, that it made us less willing to negotiate,'" JD Vance, R-Ohio, told The Daily Caller. "So this is an open secret that these guys were not driving a hard bargain, and you see the results in the border package that came out.
"And now we're seeing the second step of the process, which is kill the border package. Jam through the Ukraine package. It doesn't make any sense."
The proposed $118 border security bill, which included $60 billion in additional funding for Ukraine went down by a 49-50 margin.
When asked at a press conference Tuesday if it was time for McConnell to go, Cruz respond, "I think it is."
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