On Thursday's Tucker Carlson, Tucker read Republican candidates the riot act for failing to campaign intelligently, something that may mean that Republicans lose the Senate a second time and do so by a significant margin.  People focused on Tucker's point that Republican candidates are not talking about the single most important issue for most voters: community safety and a secure border.  However, Tucker made another important point that we need to recognize: Republican leadership — I'm looking at you, Mitch McConnell — would rather hand the country over to the Democrats than risk any leadership roles.

Trump focused on Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate in Pennsylvania.  His opponent, John Fetterman, is a radical leftist who lived off his family's wealth until he was almost 50 before getting in politics, has been part of the government that has presided over Pennsylvania's partial collapse into anarchy, and is only somewhat recovered from a stroke.  Pennsylvania is a conservative state outside the cities, and, while the cities are (of course) Democrat, they are getting destroyed by the crime wave Democrat politics have unleashed.

Tucker Carlson: Immigration and crime are issues Republicans should run on | https://t.co/SnLndIxz1N

— American Thinker (@AmericanThinker) August 20, 2022

Given the situation on the ground in Pennsylvania, as well as Biden's massive unpopularity, Dr. Oz should be as popular in Pennsylvania as Harriet Hageman was in Wyoming.  Except he's not.  He's trailing badly.  Tucker believes that this is because Oz isn't touching crime and border security.  Instead, he's wandering through grocery stores complaining about crudité prices.  And then there's this appalling ad that Tucker didn't show:

A recent political ad from @DrOz pic.twitter.com/VPWxjA3MmK

— Julia Ôÿó´©Å (@Jules31415) August 15, 2022

Tucker's complaint isn't entirely fair.  For example, Dr. Oz did put out a commercial attacking Fetterman's stand on crime.  It's just that Oz isn't getting any traction:

An important — a really important, maybe the most important — part of the reason Oz is flailing, as are other Republican candidates, is because they are not getting any support from congressional leadership.  Tucker touched upon that rather lightly by discussing the fact that Mitch McConnell is sanguine about losing the Senate.  As McConnell said of the coming election (which should be a red wave):

There's probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different. They're statewide. Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.

Tucker says of this, "Now, the truth is, it's entirely possible Mitch McConnell doesn't want to retake the Senate because then you'd have to run things and there's one thing Republican leaders dislike."

It's deeper than that, and I think our own Joe Strader was the one who identified the problem.  Strader says that McConnell, who holds the purse for supporting Republican Senate candidates nationwide, will not support candidates who won't support him.

In other words — and we're seeing it play out when McConnell simply shrugs his shoulders about flailing MAGA Senate candidates — McConnell thinks, as in Paradise Lost, it's "better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."  He would rather be the minority leader in the Senate than risk the possibility that another Republican could be the majority leader in Senate.

Image: Lucifer from Petrus de Plasiis Divine Comedy (edited).  Public domain.

If Republicans won both the House (which they seem poised to do) and the Senate, especially if a red wave gave them a veto-proof majority in both Houses, they would be able to roll back some of the worst things accomplished during Joe Biden's first two years in the White House.  They would also be able to gain control of the border, defund and rebuild the FBI, stop the transgender madness destroying children across the nation, and much more.

But because McConnell will not risk his power base, none of that will happen.  We'll get a divided Congress that can't stop Biden and that, through the Senate, will put more leftists on the federal courts, including on the Supreme Court.

McConnell really needs to examine his conscience and, assuming he has one, give massive support to every one of the Republican Senate candidates across America, whether MAGA or not.  Otherwise, he'll have the dubious distinction of being the guy who was the last head of the janitorial staff on our sunken ship of state.