Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tells
Newsmax TV that he slammed former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint and the Senate Conservatives Fund that he founded in his new memoir because the group keeps "helping to nominate people who couldn’t' win in November."
"We lost three races in 2010 in Delaware and Colorado — and in Nevada by nominating candidates who were simply unelectable in a general election," McConnell, 74, the six-term Kentucky Republican, told "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth Friday in an exclusive interview. "Then, we did it again in Missouri and Indiana in 2012."
McConnell's book is titled
"The Long Game: A Memoir." He also will be interviewed Monday on Newsmax TV's "The Steve Malzberg Show."
He calls DeMint a hypocrite who would be "almost submissive" in meetings with fellow legislators but then attack them in front of reporters.
DeMint founded the Senate Conservatives Fund in 2008 when he was on Capitol Hill. He is now president of the Heritage Foundation. The group is aligned with the tea party and has bashed Republicans it considers not conservative enough.
The losing races in 2010 that McConnell referenced to Hayworth were Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado.
In 2012, Richard Mourdock lost Indiana, as did Todd Akin in Missouri. Akin had come under fire that year for his controversial remarks about women and "legitimate rape."
With that track record for the conservative group, "I finally said 'enough,'" McConnell told Hayworth. "The only way you get to make policy is to win elections."
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