There’s a lot of talk about President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for 2024. While Trump has declared, it’s still a long way out, and DeSantis, who was just reelected governor has not. But one of the reasons that both Trump and DeSantis have appealed to people is that they are willing to fight for the principles and policies that Republicans care about, that both are unafraid to take on the Democrats.

At a time when Democrats are driving all kinds of chaos and pushing us further to the left, what we need to do is stand in the breach against all those moves. But the newly elected Senate minority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had this to say in the wake of the midterms.

McConnell: "My message to [Biden] is let's find some things between the 40 yard lines that we can agree on and we did some of that this year: infrastructure, chips, school safety, mental health." pic.twitter.com/R10DWW1WIi

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 16, 2022

“My message to [Biden] is let’s find some things between the 40-yard lines that we can agree on and we did some of that this year: infrastructure, chips, school safety, mental health,” McConnell said. But why are you talking about compromising at all, especially when you have the House? That’s the wrong position to take. That compromise on infrastructure gave the Democrats a win and may have made inflation worse. While we need attention to infrastructure, it also involved all kinds of things to which we shouldn’t have been agreeing, including billions for climate change. How about pushing our agenda, not just waiting to see what you can tolerate that the Democrats might propose? And make it just about clear things that aren’t hooking on all the Democrats’ secret agenda items in the process.

McConnell’s take on the Republicans not winning more in the midterms? It sounded like he was parroting Democratic talking points.

McConnell: "We underperformed among independents and moderates because their impression of many of the people in our party is that they're involved in chaos, negative, excessive attacks and it frightened independent and moderate Republican voters." pic.twitter.com/vgcP02OZtT

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 15, 2022

As Laura Ingraham noted during her Wednesday show, how is this different than the attacks the Democrats would level against Republicans? Where’s the criticism of the incredible negativity from Joe Biden and the Democrats? Where’s the recognition that maybe more money should have been spent in places like Arizona rather than in trying to protect Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) who threw her support to the Democratic House candidate? How does this help in Georgia, where we need to win that Senate seat?

Then there were these remarks from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) saying he was going to reach out to McConnell and ask him to work together to block out the MAGA people.

He continued, “I intend to sit down with him and say we should be working together. You’re not going to get the extremists in your party to work with anybody, but the rest of us can work together and get some real things done for the American people.” [….]

Schumer said, “It’s different this time because they lost. The red wave proved to be a red mirage. And one, not the main reason but one of the main reasons for sure, was that average American folks, even those in the middle, even those who tended to be Republican, said, ‘I’m afraid of this MAGA. They’re trying to ruin our democracy.’ If you look at the numbers, if you look at the results of the House and Senate, the MAGA Republican way didn’t work. The MAGA Republican candidate, across the board, lost. If you’re a good leader of a Republican Party, you say continuing to follow them is a path to disaster.”

So here’s a message for Mitch: This is not the way to go. Saying “Yes, all those Democratic lies about us are true” is not a winning strategy. If you do this, you will lose the base, and the Democrats will win.