According to a New York Times reports, a coalition of anti-Donald Trump Republicans are aggressively recruiting less insane members of the Party to run for offices up in the November mid-terms in the hopes of avoiding a takeover.
Former president George W. Bush reportedly discussed running for Senate with Republican Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, who would challenge incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly. Bush has been a steadfast, though publicly silent, opponent of Trump’s.
McConnell, on the other hand, publicly pushed to advance Trump’s agenda when Trump was in office with only rare rebukes, but since January 6th, the Senate Minority Leader has been more vocal about the damage Trump has caused to America. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack on Congress, McConnell gave a speech in which he seemed to support the idea that Trump would be tried by the courts for his malfeasance; McConnell has been more quiet about that in recent months as investigations have progressed.
The problem for more moderate candidates like those supported by Bush and McConnell is that Trump supporter and those that believe wild conspiracy theories are more fervent and therefore more likely to vote in primaries. Moderate candidates would lose out to people promoting election fraud, Chinese engineering the coronavirus and/or a long-running Deep State plot to silence the Trumps.