Get ready for the current in D.C. to begin moving back to the center. This is what Senate Republicans are promising if they can win back the majority in the November elections. GOP leaders are getting ready to push President Biden from the left to the center with the majority leverage, and they hope to set the stage for a major victory in the 2024 presidential election.
Many believe that Republicans have good reason to be optimistic about the midterm elections because of President Biden’s inability to get his poll numbers up. If the Democratic Party loses both the House and the Senate in November, the White House administration can expect very little movement forward in their agenda.
Republican Senator Kevin Cramer from North Dakota recently told the press, “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.”
The South Dakota Republican senator, John Thune, believes that there could be some common ground between the two parties if they focus on energy and “Big Tech.” But he also believes that the weight of responsibilities for movement will be on Biden’s administration to move toward the center.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky is going to work to keep the focus on the midterms on what the Democrats are doing with their control of Washington. He does not want the focus to be on the issues of the 2020 election.
Not wanting to count his chickens too early, McConnell has not been willing to talk deeply about what the GOP agent will be in the Senate if they are once again in control. The Kentucky senator has pointed to general issues like inflation, border control, and domestic energy production. He has not talked about what the GOP would do if there was a Supreme Court vacancy in 2023.
McConnell was willing to say that if Republicans controlled the Senate after the 2022 midterms, President Biden “would have to spend the last two years of his term being a moderate.”
Senator Mike Rounds, another Republican from South Dakota, reminded his constituency that Biden was elected because people thought he would bring the country together. He said that the core message of the midterm elections should be to tell the president that the country wants him to come to the middle.
From Mitch McConnell’s perspective, there is a history of getting to the middle with Biden during the Obama administration. He told the media that a GOP Senate with a Democratic administration would have both contrast and cooperation. But this would not make the progressives in the Democratic Party happy.
“There are things that need to be done for the American people when you have a time of divided government. In fact, I negotiated three major deals with Joe Biden while he was vice president during the Obama years,” McConnell said.
A number of Republican senators have great confidence in McConnell’s ability to work with Biden because the two men worked together in the chamber.
One of the hot-button issues that will be faced after the midterms is immigration. It is often the issue used by the parties to battle over in political wars. But it could also become an opportunity on both sides of the aisle to bolster cooperation that would be good for the country and the economy.
In such a turbulent time, and with months still to go before the midterms, both sides have some plans to make for what may be coming.
