Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., struggled Wednesday to contain how pleased he was with West Virginia voters for rewarding Republican Senate candidate Don Blankenship’s political attacks against him and his wife with a resounding defeat.
“Well, I’m glad the people of West Virginia decided that particular approach of attacking me and my family was good for a distant third place,” McConnell told Fox News with a wryly smile.
Blankenship, who lost the primary to West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, leveled increasingly personal insults at McConnell and his wife Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao as his campaign progressed, including referring to Chao’s family as “China people” and to McConnell as “Cocaine Mitch.”
After Blankenship’s concession, McConnell’s political team on Tuesday sent out a graphic on Twitter with the words, “Thanks for playing, Don.”
The image was a play on the Netflix show, “Narcos,” and the “Cocaine Mitch” nickname Blankenship gave the Senate GOP leader.
On Wednesday, McConnell said Republicans had learned from the mistakes they made during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles when the party took “a passive approach to primaries.”
“We quit doing that in 2014, and we’ve intervened in primaries where we’ve needed to in order to guarantee that we had fully electable candidates on the ballot in November,” he said.
“That’s why we took the majority in 2014, and why we kept it in 2016, and why we’re going to keep it in 2018,” McConnell added.
Morrisey will go head-to-head with Democratic incumbent Sen. Joe Manchin for his West Virginia Senate seat on November 6.
