“Those who refuse to learn from History are destined to repeat it,” – George Santayana.

Expecting a ‘red wave’ on November 8th was a part of the Republican playbook. If they talked it up enough, it would happen. It didn’t. The Republicans barely squeaked through, losing the opportunity for a majority in the Senate and barely taking the House. The halls of Congress did not resound with a roar of victory. The ‘red wave’ was barely a trickle. 

Republican leadership just failed the rank and file and failed the American people. It should have been clear that the Biden agenda had not been working for Americans. Inflation is out of control, and the price of essential goods is increasing every day. National reserves of diesel fuel are running out – just before winter. If you have a job, your salary buys less today. Our children are being sacrificed on the altar of wokeness. And there is no hope in sight for relief from any of it.  

It should have been a no-brainer. Simple. America is suffering, and we need to begin to fix it. But in ‘woke’ states around the country – New York, Michigan, California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington, Democrats were elected and re-elected by lemming-like voters, willing to follow their leaders over the cliff for no reason more than the ”D” after their name. Learning from history, it seems, is not what Americans are very good at. 

The Republicans are not much better, it seems. Senator Mitch McConnell, Senate GOP leader who has been in the Senate since 1985 and has been Republican leader since 2015, was a big part of the problem.

In the race for a Senate seat in Alaska, McConnell threw his weight behind Democrat-leaning Lisa Murkowski, who was running a tight race against Republican Kelly Tshibaka. She still had a very small lead on November 16th, although the final vote count won’t be available until Nov. 23rd. Murkowski, who has run as a Republican, committed to voting for Democrat Mary Peltola instead of the Republican candidate, and was supported by McConnell, whose Senate Leadership Fund gave Murkowski at least $9 million to support her run against Tshibaka. Tshibaka, on the other hand, was endorsed by the Alaska Republican Party. The party, which had already censured Murkowski more than a year ago, voted to also censure Mitch McConnell for using his fund against Tshibaka to fund a flood of campaign attack ads against her. The vote to censure McConnell passed by 49-8. 

The vote was accompanied by a statement that read, “The Alaska Republican Party State Central Committee condemns the divisive and misleading statements from the Senate Leadership Fund [i.e., Mitch McConnell] and the inappropriate use of millions of dollars from the Senate Leadership Fund to oppose our endorsed candidate, Kelly Tshibaka.”

In the approach to the 2022 midterms, McConnell probably hoped for a minority in the Senate over which he would have control rather than a majority that would have significantly more freedom but over which he would have far less control. He was apparently fine with a candidate who consistently voted with the Democrat party.  There is no doubt that McConnell’s interference made a huge difference. His betrayal should never have resulted in his re-election by cowardly Republican senators. But it did. 

On November 16th, barely a week after the midterms, US Senate Republicans re-elected Mitch McConnell as Senate GOP leader. He easily beat out Senator Rick Scott, with a vote count of 37-10-1 in a secret ballot. The senators who voted for him did not do themselves or their country any favors. They gave into McConnell’s power politics to a leader whose overriding interest is to maintain his own political power and access to wealth.

Using this political power to coax and threaten Republican senators to toe the line and keep him in office, Republican senators missed the opportunity to bring positive change to a stagnant senate minority that needs all the help it can get to become a cohesive voice for the conservative Americans who elected them, and to overcome McConnell’s tyrannical rule and weak political agenda.  

The GOP leadership group promises that they are ready to step into their roles and get started, but their weak showing right out of the gate does not bode well for the Senate doing anything to take on the Biden administration or Democrat Chuck Schumer’s highly suspect leadership whose goals are similar to McConnell’s own. With McConnell leading the Senate Republicans, it is far from clear that anything much will change. Over the last eight years, his leadership has given little hope that his agenda has anything to do with what America wants and needs. 

The Senate Republicans have learned little from history. Whatever hold McConnell has over them individually, it shouldn’t be enough to convince them to turn from their commitment to their constituents or to uphold their vows to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and that includes the home-grown enemies of democracy who walk the Halls of Congress and set their agendas to elevate their power and wealth at the expense of the country they a sworn to “support and defend.”