McConnell Argues MAGA Candidates Lost Because They ‘Frightened’ Independent Voters With ‘Chaos’ and ‘Excessive Attacks’

The Republican leader in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), took a veiled swipe at MAGA candidates who lost their senate races last Tuesday, saying that they “frightened” independent voters with “chaos, negativity, and excessive attacks.”

On Tuesday, McConnell insisted he had the votes to remain the senate’s GOP leader and was asked during a press conference about the criticism he has received from his fellow Republicans.

“One of the criticisms from Senator Scott and others who agree with him is that your decision not to have an agenda to run on opened up Republican candidates to attacks that they didn’t really stand for anything. What is your response to the criticism that you are partially responsible?” asked a reporter.

“Every one of our candidates knew what they were for. Expressed it quite clearly. It’s pretty obvious. And all of you have been writing about it. What happened? We underperformed among independents and moderates because their impression of many of the people in our party in leadership roles is that they’re involved in chaos, negativity, excessive attacks,” replied McConnell.

“And it frightened independent and moderate Republican voters,” he continued, adding:

And we saw that, which is why you all recall, I never predicted a red wave. We never saw that in any of our polling in the states that we were counting on to win. There was no way, we had a national issue set that was favorable.

But as a result of our own, the perception many of them had that we were not dealing with issues in a responsible way, and we were spending too much time on negativity and attacks and chaos. They were frightened, and so they pulled back.

McConnell continued and directly called out Blake Masters in Arizona and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire as particularly weak candidates, both of whom were endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

“We in two states, for example, excuse me, in two states, for example, got just crushed by independent voters, Arizona and New Hampshire. So we learned some lessons about this. And I think the lesson is pretty clear. Senate races are different. Candidate quality, we recall, I said in August is important. And in most of our states we met that test and a few of them we did not,” McConnell concluded.

Watch the full clip above via C-SPAN