Rick Wilson is a Republican strategist and author of "Everything Trump Touches Dies." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

(CNN) Something has gone wrong in the past 48 hours with Mitch McConnell's well-oiled Senate machine. Though the GOP majority leader eventually prevailed, 11 of his Republican colleagues stood on the Senate floor this week and voted to maintain sanctions on companies tied to Russian oligarch and President Vladimir Putin ally Oleg Deripaska, despite direct requests from the White House and McConnell.

Rick Wilson

Trump's dangerously pro-Putin flirtation with leaving NATO has met almost universal opposition in the Senate chamber. The biggest sign, however, is the Senate's softening support of Trump's monthlong government shutdown.

McConnell is a wily, unflappable, and determined Senate leader, and Democrats who underestimate him do so at their constant political peril, which is why the nervous muttering inside the Senate GOP about the economic damage this ongoing shutdown is causing the nation -- to say nothing of the political cost it is causing the GOP -- is so notable. For once, the complaints and concerns aren't from the Democrats whom McConnell spanks on a regular basis. The worry is coming from the Senate GOP, especially from some of the 22 Republican Senators up for reelection in 2020.

Unlike the class of senators who ran in 2018, when the GOP managed -- quel miracle! -- to gain seats in deep-red states like North Dakota, Missouri, and Indiana, the 2020 landscape for GOP incumbent senators includes many in battleground states -- and in a presidential year.

Like all incumbents, the Republicans up for re-election in 2020 don't want to meet the same fate 40 of their colleagues in the House experienced last year. They'd like to go into a re-election year with a strong economy and the sense that Washington is at least vaguely trying to do something more productive than engaging in political arson. For now, however, McConnell seems to be following then-House Speaker Paul Ryan's strategy of 2018: Tie the GOP to the mast, and stick with Trump at all costs. His caucus is nervous, and rightly so.

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