by Burgess Everett at yahoo!news
A handful of GOP senators are weighing whether to force a fraught internal debate about their leadership’s future after Mitch McConnell’s second public freeze-up in a month.
Some rank-and-file Republicans have discussed the possibility of a broader conversation once senators return to Washington next week, according to a person directly involved in the conversations who confirmed them on condition of anonymity. Party leadership is not currently involved in those discussions, and nothing has been decided yet, this person added.
It takes just five Republican senators to force a special conference meeting, which is the most direct way to have a specific discussion about the minority leader after his public pause on Wednesday revived questions about his condition. But the Senate GOP also holds private lunches two or three times a week, giving members another forum for hashing out the direction of the party’s leadership — one that could forestall the need for a special confab.
And McConnell’s health is a touchy subject: The 81-year-old, the longest-serving party leader in Senate history, doesn’t like to discuss it. Even detractors of the Kentucky Republican’s leadership style are sensitive to the health issues he faces after falling in March and suffering a concussion.
Even so, the question now facing the GOP is whether…
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