July 20, 2022 09:07 AM UTC

Joe O'Dea Key To Mitch McConnell's Second Coming

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• by: Colorado Pols

At home in Colorado, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea is predictably racing to the center after surviving a primary in which O’Dea was forced to pander to the hard right on a range of issues. Free of the need to appease the GOP base, O’Dea is trying to position himself as a “different kind of Republican” who “avoids the wedge issues” to focus on “what matters most.” The thinking is that’s a brand amenable to the benchmark Colorado unaffiliated voter in a state that has trended blue for the last several elections.

But in Washington, as Axios’ Josh Kraushaar reports, Joe O’Dea is being sold…very differently:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made a surprise appearance Tuesday night at a Capitol Hill fundraiser for Joe O’Dea, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Colorado who is pledging to compete aggressively for Democrat Michael Bennet’s seat…

“I just want to assure everybody, we’re going to be all-in in Colorado,” McConnell told the assembled crowd, according to a person who attended the event. [Pols emphasis]

Joining Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at yesterday’s fundraiser for Joe O’Dea was pretty much the who’s who of Republican Senate villainy:

Also in attendance: National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Rick Scott, Senate Republican Whip John Thune, Republican Senate conference chairman John Barrasso and former Sen. Cory Gardner, the last Republican to win a Senate race in Colorado.

We haven’t seen any photos from yesterday’s fundraiser, but an image of McConnell, National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chair Sen. Rick “Bat Boy” Scott, and the last Republican in Colorado to lose a Senate race Cory Gardner all together with O’Dea would be worth a million dollars to Democrats. It’s proof that just like with Gardner in 2014, it doesn’t matter what O’Dea says about individual issues as he attempts to reposition to the center.

What matters is that O’Dea will help Mitch McConnell take back the U.S. Senate.

O’Dea has already gone on record saying he would have voted for Donald Trump’s judicial picks, which means like Gardner O’Dea would have paved the way for the radicalized Trump Supreme Court now in the process of dismantling once-settled civil rights precedents. More than anyone in America short of perhaps Trump himself, McConnell has been responsible for the last decade of total partisan political warfare from the Republican Party that first ground Barack Obama’s presidency to a halt and then lurched right with ferocious speed under Trump.

For Democrats struggling to respond to O’Dea’s Gardner-style slipperiness on the issues, they’ve just been handed a concise and powerful argument that voters in November will understand very well.

A vote for Joe O’Dea is a vote for Mitch McConnell.