Mo Brooks: McConnell should leave leadership if he can’t repeal ObamaCare

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who is running for the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is renewing his calls for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to step down from his leadership role after the chamber rejected the latest effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

“Unquestionably, the leadership at the top is responsible. The buck stops there, that’s why you take on that kind of responsibility,” Brooks said Friday following the shocking vote. “And if Mitch McConnell cannot get the job done on this, how is he going to get the job done on the rest of President Trump’s agenda over the next three-and-a-half years? This is a killer.

“It’s not necessarily anything bad about Mitch McConnell himself personally. But he’s got a job to do, and if he can’t do it, then, as ‘The Apprentice’ would say, ‘you’re fired,’ get somebody who can.”

{mosads}It’s not the first time Brooks, who’s running for the Senate seat currently occupied by Luther Strange (R-Ala.), has called for McConnell to step down from his leadership role.

He also raised the idea on Wednesday during a policy breakfast at the conservative Heritage Foundation, where he called McConnell the “head of the swamp.” The majority leader is supporting Strange’s bid in the special Alabama election scheduled for December.

Brooks’s latest comments on Friday came just hours after the Senate narrowly rejected GOP leaders’ so-called skinny ObamaCare repeal bill, all but derailing Republicans’ existing efforts to overhaul the country’s healthcare system.

McConnell owns the bill’s failure, Brooks said, and, if he can’t successfully front the repeal effort, the Kentucky Republican should turn over leadership to someone else.

“I hope they won’t quit. And if they’re going to quit, well then, by God, maybe they ought to start at the top with Mitch McConnell leaving his position and letting somebody new, somebody bold, somebody conservative take the reins,” he said.