Razor-thin Senate majority, bloody primary fights hamstring GOP

The more they bicker, the better for the US!

Razor-thin Senate majority, bloody primary fights hamstring GOP


https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/razor-thin-senate-majority-bloody-primary-fights-hamstring-gop/2018/04/19/072b674a-43e4-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d633788b79e9

by Michael Scherer, Sean Sullivan and Josh Dawsey April 19 at 7:44 PM Email the author

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is scrambling to reassert control over a Republican Party hamstrung by a razor-thin governing majority and riven by increasingly bloody primary fights.

Votes in the Senate on even straightforward measures, such as Thursday’s on the next NASA administrator, have become a struggle, as individual GOP members leverage the absence of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to pursue other aims.

McConnell had to pull aside rogue senators over their occasional defiance twice in the last two days. He warned one — Bob Corker — in a private conversation that his comments risked hurting the party’s ability to hold its majority in November’s midterm elections.

Outside Washington, McConnell’s allies have launched major ad campaigns against two Republican Senate candidates they see as potential liabilities in the general election­ — former coal baron Don Blankenship in West Virginia and Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel.

Other races, in Indiana and Montana, are quickly becoming costly slugfests, distracting the party from its central mission of dislodging vulnerable Democratic incumbents. .....................................