Rep. Dave Brat: McConnell failures in Senate are ‘embarrassing’

Weighing in on Roy Moore’s victory in the Alabama GOP senate primary runoff, Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., said Wednesday that Republican leadership in the United States Senate is “in for some trouble.”

Tuesday is being characterized as a “dreadful” day for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Roy Moore’s blowout nine-point victory came despite nearly $10 million pumped into the race in defense of appointed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, R-Ala., by McConnell’s super PAC allies. On top of that, McConnell’s ally Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., announced he will not run for re-election, and the latest iteration of Obamacare faux-repeal failed after McConnell was unable to put together a majority of Republicans willing to fulfill their seven-year campaign promises to repeal Obamacare.

Speaking to C-SPAN, Rep. Brat said Moore’s victory shows Republican voters are fed up with McConnell’s failures, The Washington Examiner reports.

“On the Senate side, I think, yeah, the leadership over there is in for some trouble,” Brat said.

“They couldn’t even get, right after they voted on it 50 times over seven years ... and they couldn’t get a vote through on any form of Obamacare repeal,” he said.

“I mean, they had a skinny bill that was more like a Madison Avenue marketing tagline,” Brat added. “What is a skinny bill? It’s one fifth of the economy. And they couldn't even get a tagline passed.”

Brat called these repeated failures “embarrassing.” And he knows something about embarrassing Republican leadership.

In 2014, Rep. Brat was first elected to Congress over the incumbent Republican Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, Eric Cantor. It was the first time a primary challenger had ousted a sitting House Majority Leader since the position was created in 1899. Cantor’s defeat sent shockwaves throughout D.C. Republicans, who were then on the cusp of securing a deal with Democrats to pass the Gang of Eight illegal-immigrant amnesty bill.

In the aftermath of that election, the conservative grassroots of the party were heard, and the amnesty deal died. The conservative grassroots were heard again on Tuesday.

Roy Moore’s defeat of McConnell-backed Sen. Strange comes at a similar time, when Senate Republican leadership has failed to advance a conservative agenda and, once again, is looking to make deals with Democrats to secure amnesty for illegal aliens. The nomination of Moore, a principled conservative, sends the message that the base of this party wants results, not talk, from the Congress.

Throughout the course of the campaign, Roy Moore made clear he supported President Trump’s campaign agenda, particularly on the illegal immigration issue. He came out strongly against DACA amnesty during a primary debate — taking the same position on DACA that Donald Trump held on the campaign trail in 2016.

On this issue and others, including rogue leftist judges, out-of-control government spending, and a return to our constitutional order, Roy Moore speaks out and takes principled stands where Republican leadership is fumbling and capitulating to the Democrats.

Like Rep. Brat, Roy Moore was elected to send a message to Republican leadership to return to conservative principles and start advancing the conservative agenda. There would be no need for Republican voters to nominate candidates like Roy Moore if Mitch McConnell and his Senate conference would just keep the promises they’ve made to conservatives.

Will it take more primary defeats for them to learn that lesson?