Congressional Republicans will compel Joe Biden to desert his Democrat-Socialist agenda and reach for the center– if they get control of Congress this November, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday.
“Let me put it this way, Biden ran as a moderate. If I’m the majority leader in the Senate, and Kevin McCarthy’s the speaker of the House, we’ll make sure Joe Biden is a moderate,” McConnell said on “Fox News Sunday,” referring to if the GOP sweeps the midterm elections.
McConnell(R-Ky.)then took a jab at the Biden administration, saying it “just can’t seem to get their act together on the economy,” causing bad polling numbers for Biden and increasing the opportunity for Republicans to win majorities.
“The economy, the precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the domestic energy issue we’ve already been discussing, crime, problems in public education, this administration has really got its hands full and I think they’re headed toward a pretty good beating in the fall election,” McConnell said.
“Well, our agenda next year, if we’re fortunate enough to be in the majority, will be focused on exactly what you and I have been talking about, crime, education, beefing up the defense of our country,” he told host Dana Perino.
McConnell was asked what he believed was behind Biden’s faltering task approval and favorability ratings that have actually recently struck the most affordable of his presidency.
“I like the president personally. It’s pretty clear to me that personality is, in my view, not what’s driving his unpopularity. I think it’s the policies they’ve been pursuing,” McConnell said.
Other congressional Republican politicians revealed comparable beliefs as McConnell, indicating that Biden might face a considerably different 2nd half of his first term.
“If Joe Biden is confronted with a Republican majority in both chambers, I’ve always thought that the onus is really on him. Because it will be a test of just how pragmatic and transactional he can be. … So, I think the test is really on him,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told The Hill.
Sen. John Thune (R-SD) stated Biden, if challenged by a Republican-controlled Congress, would have to adjust his political stance.
“If we were to get the majority back … I think he’s going to have to move to the middle,” Thune, the second most powerful Republican in the Senate, told The Hill.
Along with possible conflicts over the administration’s policies, fireworks could appear over whether a Republican-controlled Senate would hold hearings for a 2nd Biden candidate on the Supreme Court after the recent contentious hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
She was verified in a 53-47 vote with three GOP senators voting for her– Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska– however hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee were extreme as she was grilled on her sentencing in kid porn cases, her views of vital race theory and her judicial philosophy.
McConnell, in an interview last week, was asked if he would hold hearings for a Biden candidate if the GOP was a majority.
“Most hypotheticals I don’t answer. And that whole question puts the cart before the horse,” McConnell told Axios. “We’re hoping to get into the majority as a result of this year’s election.”
He said he would work with Biden if “he’s willing to be a moderate.”
“But with regard to personnel and the other things that we’re involved in, I’m not going to signal how we’re going to approach it,” he added.
