Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Sunday said he is backing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as the Senate Republican leader after some lawmakers said they opposed him.
“I don’t see why we would delay the election since all five or six of our leadership elections are uncontested,” Cotton told CBS News on Sunday. “The great wrestling champion Ric Flair used to say, ‘To be the man, you got to beat the man.’”
“And so far, no one has had the nerve to step forward and challenge Sen. McConnell,” he added. “So, I support Sen. McConnell. I support the other slate of candidates for our leadership elections.”
In the Sunday interview, Cotton did not provide another reason for backing McConnell.
Cotton then suggested that the Republican Party should focus on the Georgia runoff election scheduled for next month even though Republicans would still be in the minority party after a Democrat was called the winner of Nevada’s Senate seat on Saturday.
The Dec. 6 runoff won’t be for Senate control after Democrats retained seats in Arizona and Nevada. Successful reelection bids by Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) were what Democrats needed to keep the slimmest of margins in the chamber.
Georgia requires a runoff if a candidate doesn’t win a majority in the party primary or in the general election. Neither Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock nor Republican Herschel Walker got to 50 percent.
Some of Cotton’s GOP colleagues, including Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.), have called on the GOP leadership elections to be postponed after the party lost the Senate. They are reportedly going to be held next week.
During the CBS News interview, Cotton also did not address concerns raised by Scott and other GOP lawmakers that Republican congressional leaders caved to Democrats on certain bills, including gun control, infrastructure, and the debt ceiling.
“What do we stand for? What are we hell-bent to get done?” Scott asked during a Fox News interview on Sunday. “The leadership in the Republican Senate says, ‘No, you cannot have a plan. We’re just going to run against how bad the Democrats are.’ And, actually, then they cave in to the Democrats.”
Scott added that Republican leadership is seeking to “rush through an election because they don’t want to do any assessment of what we have done wrong.”
So far, McConnell and other members of the Republican leadership have not issued any public comments. The Epoch Times has contacted McConnell’s office for comment.
