Sen. Mike Lee recently appeared on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” where he discussed his qualms with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Utah senator called for McConnell to step down from his position in Congress, explaining that the Republicans in the Senate are not part of a “feudal system.”
Fox News host Maria Bartiromo questioned Lee’s stance, asking the senator, “Why do you want Mitch McConnell to step down.” Lee slammed fellow members of his party for not standing firm in defense of conservative values, often siding with Democrats on issues. According to Lee, this is “alienating” to conservative voters who are supposed to be represented by these politicians.
“Look, Republican senators are not part of some feudal system,” Lee replied. “We each are represented to — we’re each representing our own states. And in occasion after occasion, bill after bill, we have seen Senate Republican leadership joining ranks with all or most Democrats, sharply dividing Republicans, actively alienating most Republican voters and taking a different position than most Republican senators in order to enact Democratic priorities and things that unite the Senate Democratic conference.”
Lee continued describing the ramifications of alienating the Republican base, claiming the party could suffer in coming elections as a result. The senator offered a hopeful message, pointing out that Republicans have a shot at securing more of a congressional majority in the upcoming election. However, he warns that his party could squander the opportunity if they don’t prioritize the values of the conservative voter.
“This is nothing personal against any individual in leadership,” he continued. “And yet we do have to deal with this issue because this is how we alienate our voters. This is how we lose elections that should be won. We have got a real opportunity, Maria, for Republicans to take the majority this November. But if we keep doing things through our leadership that end up enacting priorities for the Democrats, we’re going to have brand confusion. And the voters who we need to show up to vote for Republican candidates in Senate races all over the country are going to be less likely to do that if they can’t tell which team is responsible for what policy.”
Watch Sen. Lee here:
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Recently, Lee has consistently been critical of Republican leadership. The American Tribune reported on the senator calling for an urgent change of intra-party leadership amid the ongoing border crisis. Lee appeared to specifically call out GOP veterans such as Mitch McConnell, who has been criticized for working closely with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“Even while refusing to let us see the bill they claimed to be negotiating on our behalf—for MONTHS—they were never in doubt, insisting we’d be dumb and even unpatriotic NOT to support it,” Lee posted on X. “This is a disqualifying betrayal.”
“If you had a lawyer, agent, or employee who (while negotiating on your behalf) botched a deal as badly as Senate GOP leadership botched this border / supplemental aid package, would you immediately fire that person?” Lee asked on X, including a voting poll where over 98% of respondents said “yes.”
Featured image credit: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mike_Lee_(25071186171).jpg