Category: Senate

Sasse’s expected exit shrinks Senate’s anti-Trump wing

Posted on (Updated by Alexander Bolton

Sen. Ben Sasse’s (R-Neb.) expected retirement from the Senate is the latest sign that is it harder to be a Republican critic of former President Trump in Congress than a loyal ally.

Sasse is one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict former President Trump last year during his impeachment trial over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He’s the third to retire.

The Nebraskan senator not that long ago was also seen as a rising star in his party and a possible presidential candidate. But that possibility seemed more and more faint as Sasse’s opposition to various Trump actions grew.

Republicans who closely follow Congress say Sasse’s retirement reflects growing polarization in Washington, which has only accelerated since Trump won election to the White House in 2016. And they say there’s less of a political future for GOP lawmakers who won’t embrace Trump.  

“Trump has undermined our party. He’s running a cult and he’s a cultist figure and he’s only concerned about himself, and he’s done fundamental damage to our constitutional electoral process, and so when people who are willing to stand up to him leave the Senate, that hurts because senators should be able to stand up to someone like Trump. That’s why you get a six-year term,” said former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who was a respected fiscal conservative and a member of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) leadership team during his Senate career.   

Gregg said the departure of so many senior Republicans who were known for both their close relationships with McConnell and their willingness to be pragmatic to get important bills passed for the good of the country is a troubling sign for both the Senate and the nation.  

“It’s not surprising. The Congress has been taken over by a lot of folks who are dominated by the extremes of their party, both the Democratic and Republican, and getting things done if you’re a thoughtful centrist is very difficult,” he said of Sasse’s retirement. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some frustration there.”  

Gregg predicted the departure of so many seasoned legislators will make it tougher for McConnell — or any leader in Congress — to get things done next year.  

“Complex issues … requires people who are willing to cross the aisle and compromise and are substantive, and when you lose like folks like that and you lose the center of the Senate — and the center of the Senate has always been rational, thoughtful doers, versus shouters — it makes it very hard to legislate on complex and difficult issues,” he said.  

Sasse is a finalist to become the University of Florida’s next president — a position he is expected to take. It would end what had been a noteworthy Senate career.

Sasse often decried knee-jerk partisan polarization within the Senate and earlier this year unveiled an ethics reform package to restore public faith in Washington.  

It included a ban on lawmakers trading stocks and making huge salaries in lobbying jobs after leaving Congress as well as requiring presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns and prohibiting foreign nationals from funding state and local ballot initiatives.  

Trump famously refused to make his tax returns public during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns and during his time in the White House.  

“Ben Sasse was one of the people who made the Senate work,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “And there’s a pattern of a lot people who made the Senate work who are leaving the institution, and that’s not good for the country and not good for our democracy.”

Ayres suspects that Sasse and other retiring Senate Republicans are fed up with what he called “the toxic polarization” that’s made it “difficult to do the things that led them to run for the Senate in the first place.”  

Besides Sasse, Sens. Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Richard Burr (N.C.), who also voted to convict Trump in 2021, are retiring. The other four GOP senators who voted to convict Trump are Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine) and Bill Cassidy (La.).

Lawmakers in both parties are bracing themselves for standoffs over government funding measures and legislation to raise the debt limit if House Republicans, who are generally more allied with Trump, win control of the lower chamber.  

It’s not yet clear who Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts will appoint to replace Sasse, who was reelected to a second term in 2020, but other retiring Republicans may be replaced by Republicans Trump endorsed in the primaries.  

Those Trump-backed candidates, who are either favored to win or have a good chance of being elected, include Rep. Ted Budd (R) in North Carolina, J.D. Vance in Ohio and Eric Schmitt in Missouri. 

Budd has embraced Trump’s claims of election fraud and introduced his Combat Voter Fraud Act, while Vance said in January the election was stolen and Schmitt joined a lawsuit with 17 other state attorneys general to overturn the results of the 2020 election.  

Sasse was an outspoken critic of Trump throughout his Senate career, though he toned down his criticisms in time to win Trump’s endorsement during his 2020 Republican primary.  

But after clinching the Senate GOP nomination for Nebraska, he ripped Trump apart at a telephone town hall a few weeks before the 2020 general election, calling the president’s values “deficient” because of “the way he kisses dictators’ butts” and “mocks evangelicals” and “flirted with white supremacists.”  

When he voted to impeach Trump, he declared the former president had “lied about widespread voter fraud,” spread “conspiracy theories” and fanned those lies when he summoned his supporters to Capitol Hill to “intimidate Vice President Pence” into halting the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.  

Burr and Toomey joined Sasse in voting to convict Trump on the charge of inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection during his second impeachment trial. But several retiring senators who have often been loyal to McConnell were willing to stand up to Trump in significant ways.   

Retiring Sen. Ron Portman (R-Ohio) played a lead role in negotiating last year’s $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, which 18 other Republicans voted for, including retiring Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Burr and McConnell. Trump fiercely opposed the bill, and later said Republicans who voted for it should “be ashamed of themselves” for “helping the Democrats.”   

In October of last year, Blunt, Portman and retiring Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.)  joined McConnell in voting for a procedural motion to circumvent a filibuster on legislation to raise the federal debt ceiling and avoid a national default, again despite Trump’s opposition. Trump at the time accused these Republicans of “folding to the Democrats again.”   

James Wallner, a former Senate Republican aide, predicted that McConnell may have to undergo a tough transition next year when many of his loyal allies will be replaced by pro-Trump Republicans unfamiliar with the arcane procedures of the Senate and the nuances and challenges of getting bills passed.  

“Just look at what happened after the 2010 election; it took Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans to get a handle on the” conservatives who were elected in the Tea Party revolution, Wallner said. “There was a lot of turmoil and institutional uncertainty after that election.  

“If you have a large number of members on either side of the aisle come in, the potential for disrupting business as usual in the Senate is a lot greater,” he said.  

Trump Celebrates ‘Lightweight’ Never Trumper ‘Liddle’ Ben Sasse’s Resignation From Senate

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

Donald Trump celebrated the news that “lightweight” Nebraska Republican Ben Sasse is set to resign from the Senate.

Reports surfaced Thursday that Sasse, an outspoken “Never Trumper,” was set to resign from his seat by the end of the year and would be accepting a job as the president of the University of Florida.

Sasse shared an article that listed him as a “finalist” for the position with the college.

He wrote that he is “delighted to be in conversation with the leadership of this special community about how we might together build a vision for UF to be the nation’s most dynamic, bold, future-oriented university.”

The university named him the sole finalist, citing his “intellectual curiosity” and his abilities as a “gifted public servant.”

RELATED: Ben Sasse Joins List Of Anti-Trump Republicans Censured By Their Own Party

Trump Happy to Hear Ben Sasse Will Resign

Former President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social media platform to celebrate the “great news” that Senator Ben Sasse was poised to resign.

As one would expect, he added amusing nicknames and insults to his celebratory posting.

“Great news for the United States Senate, and our Country itself,” Trump wrote. “Liddle’ Ben Sasse, the lightweight Senator from the great State of Nebraska, will be resigning.”

He went on to state that he is looking forward to working with a real Republican, which, in his mind, is somebody not so weak as to cave to Democrat impeachment circus trials.

“We have enough weak and ineffective RINOs in our midst,” Trump said. “I look forward to working with the terrific Republican Party of Nebraska to get a REAL Senator to represent the incredible People of that State, not another Fake RINO!”

RELATED: Here Are the 6 Republicans Who Voted That Trump’s Impeachment Trial Is Constitutional

Voted to Impeach

Trump’s ire, as it often does, comes from the fact that Sasse was one of just seven Republican senators to vote to convict the former President after the House of Representatives impeached him for his alleged role in the January 6 riot at the Capitol.

Sasse argued that by telling protesters to peacefully make their voices heard, Trump had “disregarded his oath of office.”

Explaining his vote to impeach, the Nebraska Republican claimed Trump’s words in denying the election results “had consequences” and brought the country “dangerously close to a bloody constitutional crisis.”

But Sasse had walked far down the Never Trumper path by that point already.

Prior to the Capitol riot, in October of 2020, audio leaked of Sasse absolutely excoriating then-President Trump for allegedly selling out America’s allies and ‘flirting’ with white supremacists.

“The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership, the way he treats women, spends like a drunken sailor,” he said when a constituent asked why he criticizes Trump so much.

“The ways I criticize President Obama for that kind of spending, I’ve criticized President Trump for as well,” Sasse added before listing off several reasons why he deserves scorn.

“He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He’s flirted with white supremacists,” he said.

The comments were nearly indiscernible from even the most rabidly anti-Trump Democrats.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican, will now be tasked with naming a temporary replacement for the Senate seat left behind when Ben Sasse resigns.

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Inside McConnell and Murkowski’s battle over Trump’s impeachment

Posted on (Updated by Alexander Bolton

Tensions flared between Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and swing Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) during then-President Trump’s first impeachment trial in the Winter of 2020, according to an exclusively obtained excerpt from a new book.

New revelations about what McConnell did behind the scenes to help Trump during his first impeachment trial shows the minority leader was one of Trump’s most effective Senate allies before their dramatic falling out after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.  

They also show that while McConnell is now supporting Murkowski's re-election bid against a Trump-backed challenger, Kelly Tshibaka, just two years ago the two senators were at loggerheads over how to respond to questions about Trump's conduct and fitness for office.

The forthcoming book, “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” reveals that McConnell leaned hard on Murkowski to vote against calling more witnesses at Trump’s impeachment trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.  

Murkowski at the time said publicly she “was disturbed” by McConnell’s pledge to work in “total coordination” with Trump’s legal team and “take my cues from the president’s lawyers.” 

Murkowski saw senators more as members of an impartial jury, not an extension of the defense team, and told a reporter in Alaska shortly before Christmas 2019 that McConnell had “further confused the process.”  

Murkowski’s criticism of McConnell started trending on Twitter. When she woke up the next morning after a late night of wrapping Christmas presents at her cabin outside of Anchorage, she found a “snarky” message from McConnell in her email inbox. 

It was “a missive that would zap all the holiday cheer out of her for two days. The leader was not happy with her comments. And he wanted to talk to her,” longtime Washington reporters Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian write in “Unchecked,” which will go on sale Oct. 18.  

McConnell later tried to mend fences with Murkowski, whom he knew would be a key Republican vote. If she defected, the charges against Trump would have posed a huge political liability for the president and his party heading into the 2020 election.  

After returning to Washington after the recess, McConnell summoned Murkowski to walk over to him on the Senate floor and told her: “You and I are on the same page.” 

He signaled he didn’t have lingering hard feelings by recalling how in the same interview in which Murkowski criticized him, she also criticized Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for rushing the impeachment investigation.  

And he tried to defend his statement that he would coordinate closely with the White House legal team by arguing that Democrats had done the same thing during Bill Clinton’s 1999 impeachment trial. 

But it still was a sore subject for Murkowski.  

“Well don’t advertise it!” she had snapped back. 

Bade, the co-author of Politico Playbook, and Demirjian, a member of The Washington Post’s national security team, write that Murkowski also struggled with herself over how to handle the trial, and how to vote on the crucial question of allowing House Democratic prosecutors to call additional witnesses, which would have extended the trial for weeks or even months.

McConnell worked behind the scenes to persuade her not to defect and vote with Democrats.  

He knew he couldn’t bully her so he had to use the tactic he had deployed so effectively over his years as leader to convince wayward Republican colleagues to toe the party line.  

“McConnell never threatened. He never bullied. And though he often left her space to follow her own intuition, he was an expert at laying the guilt on thick and backing her into a corner,” the authors write.  

Murkowski was a critical player in the 2020 impeachment trial because she turned out to be the deciding swing vote on the question of calling more witnesses.

Unlike the vote on convicting the president and removing him from office, which requires two-thirds of the Senate — which was never a real possibility in January of 2020 — the procedural vote on calling more witnesses only needed a simple majority.  

Republicans controlled 53 seats, but moderate Sens. Susan Collins (R), who was up for re-election in Maine, a Democratic-leaning state, and Mitt Romney (R-Utah), an outspoken Trump critic, were expected to vote for additional witnesses. If Murkowski joined them, there would be a 50-50 tie on the question and it would have fallen to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to decide or punt on the crucial question.  

McConnell knew that Murkowski respected Roberts, who was presiding over the Senate trial, and exploited that to his full advantage. He warned that if she voted with Democrats to call witnesses, Roberts would be thrown into a political maelstrom along with other judges who would be forced to rule on Trump’s legal appeals. 

“The most consequential vote during this impeachment is not about whether to convict or acquit,” McConnell told Murkowski carefully, according to the book. “It’s about how to vote on witnesses—and what position that will put the courts in.” 

He told Murkowski that it would be up to her to protect the integrity of the judicial branch and stop what he viewed as a politically motivated impeachment trial from damaging the federal judiciary’s reputation as standing above politics.  

“If you don’t want to do this for the presidency, if you don’t want to do it for the Senate, if you don’t want to do this for 2020 colleagues, do it to save the courts,” he said.  

This and other anecdotes in “Unchecked” are gathered from interviews the authors conducted with the key players in Trump’s impeachment trial. The sources were granted anonymity to protect them from political and personal recriminations.  

Though Murkowski was torn over the question of witnesses, she felt sure that Trump had acted improperly by using his power as president to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on then-former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter on a July phone call.

Yet the Alaska senator thought House Democrats had rushed the impeachment investigation and had dumped an incomplete case in senators’ laps, asking them to finish their work by taking on the burden of fact finding.  

Murkowski wondered why the House had not handled the case with more care and concern. She thought that Democrats were just as guilty of playing politics as her Senate Republican colleagues who reflexively circled around Trump to defend him, even though his conduct raised serious ethical and legal questions.  

“Republican leaders, much to her frustration, were constantly telling their rank and file: ‘You gotta circle. You gotta circle together and protect one another here’ — which meant, of course, circling to protect Trump. Just like musk ox, Murkowski thought,” imagining the hulking creatures, who circle around their young with their horns turned out and their rears tucked in during times of danger, according to “Unchecked.” 

She ultimately decided the House impeachment investigation and Senate trial were flawed, but she felt there wasn’t anything she could do to rectify the situation or alter the outcome that Trump would be acquitted on the final vote.  

She and then-Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the other Republican swing vote, ultimately decided they would not support calling new witnesses, putting the trial on the path for a speedy conclusion and giving McConnell the political win he wanted.  

As Murkowski deliberated over what to do, she concluded: “Republicans were too afraid to actually check this president, and Democrats didn’t really care about putting him away—just about getting impeachment over with and using it to do maximum damage to the GOP in the 2020 election.”

“Because of that, she thought sourly, Trump would get away with everything. And she had no choice but to be complicit,” the authors write.

Morning Digest: Senate GOP has a big ad spending edge, but Democrats get more ‘bang for their buck’

Posted on by Daily Kos Elections

The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Daniel Donner, and Cara Zelaya, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

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Leading Off

● Senate: NBC reports that Republicans have outspent Democrats $106 million to $93 million over the last three weeks across the nine Senate battlegrounds, but, because so many GOP candidates are relying on super PACs to make up for their underwhelming fundraising, they aren't getting as much "bang for their buck" as their rivals. That's because, as we've written before, FCC regulations give candidates—but not outside groups—discounted rates on TV and radio.

Perhaps no race better demonstrates this in action than the Arizona Senate race. The GOP firm OH Predictive Insights relays that during the week of Sept. 19, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and his allies outspent Republican Blake Masters' side 52-48 in advertising. Anyone just looking at raw dollar amounts would conclude that the two parties aired about the same number of ads during this period, but that's not the case at all. In reality, Kelly's side had a 4-1 advantage in ​​gross ratings points, which measure how many times, on average, members of an ad's target audience have seen it.

Republicans can blame Masters, whom NBC says has spent all of $9,000 on ads during most of September, for much of the imbalance. The Senate Leadership Fund last week canceled all its planned ad time in Arizona while arguing that other super PACs would step in, and this data shows why Masters badly needs this prediction to finally come true.

Outside groups, though, can still air more ads than well-funded candidates if they're willing and able to spend massive amounts the way the GOP is in Ohio. Cleveland.com's Andrew Tobias reports that Republicans are airing 20% more commercials than their Democratic foes in the Buckeye State after spending or reserving almost three times as much. Democrat Tim Ryan, writes Tobias, is responsible for 83% of the ads coming from his side compared to just 8% for Vance, but the Senate Leadership Fund has committed $28 million here to bail out its underwhelming nominee.

Senate

● NC-Sen: Both Democrat Cheri Beasley and her allies at Senate Majority PAC are airing new commercials charging that when Republican Ted Budd's farm company, AgriBioTech, went bankrupt in 2000, it chose to repay itself rather than pay back the small farmers and creditors it owed millions to. "The Budds took $10 million and left over 1,000 farmers holding the bag," Beasley's narrator argues, while SMP declares, "One grower said, 'we were the little guy,' 'we got screwed.'"

The story was first reported last year by the Washington Post's Michael Kranish, who wrote that "a trustee for farmers and other creditors alleged that his [Budd's] father, Richard Budd, improperly transferred millions of dollars in assets to his family, including Ted Budd." The candidate was not an official at ABT, though the story identifies him as a "significant shareholder." The trustee, which named him as a defendant in their civil case, also accused Budd of having "acted in concert" with his father "in connection with the fraudulent transfers."

The matter was ultimately settled in 2005, with Kranish saying that the "Budd entities" agreed to pay "less than half of the amount initially earmarked for the farmers and other creditors" without admitting to any wrongdoing. The settlement left some bad feelings, though, with one Wyoming farmer telling the Post, "We got screwed and there was not a freaking thing we could do about it. There was no way to fight multimillionaires."

Richard Budd, who became chief executive of ABT after it bought his family's seed company, defended the candidate to Kranish, arguing, "Your attempts to tie my son to this business are dishonest and offensive. I wish my personal efforts to save ABT had been successful, but they were not." Ted Budd's campaign also denied any wrongdoing, saying the trustee's claims were "untrue allegations that are typical in that sort of litigation."

Budd and his allies at the Senate Leadership Fund, meanwhile, are each running commercials arguing that Beasley wants 87,000 more IRS agents, which continues to be a popular line of attack in GOP ads across the country. As we've written before, the agency reportedly will use the funds provided by the Inflation Reduction Act to replace many of the nearly 50,000 of its employees who could retire over the next five years. Many of the thousands of newly created IRS jobs beyond those positions would be in customer service and information technology.

And while the SLF has run ad after ad accusing Democrats of hating the police, its own commercial features menacing footage of what NBC says is "police raids and special agents at a gun range." Those videos accompany the narrator's prediction that "Beasley's gonna knock on your door with an army of new IRS agents" and that she "backs the liberal scheme to spend billions auditing the middle class, sending the IRS beast to collect her taxes on working families."

However, even Trump-appointed IRS Director Charles Rettig has stated that the agency would not crack down on those making less than $400,000, explaining that the beefed up enforcement of tax evasion would only target corporations and the richest 1-2% of households.

● PA-Sen: John Fetterman is airing another commercial pushing back on Republican Mehmet Oz and his allies' ads hitting the Democrat's work as head of the state Board of Pardons, which has been the GOP's favorite line of attack in the general election.

"Here's the truth: John gave a second chance to those who deserved it―nonviolent offenders, marijuana users," Montgomery County Sheriff Sean Kilkenny tells the audience, continuing, "He voted with law enforcement experts nearly 90% of the time. He reunited families and protected our freedom―and he saved taxpayer money." Kilkenny adds, "Dr. Oz doesn't know a thing about crime. He only knows how to help himself."

The GOP, though, is trying to push a very different line. Some of the party's favorite targets have been Lee and Dennis Horton, brothers who spent 27 years in prison after being convicted of second degree murder. The two in 1993 gave a ride to a friend named Robert Leaf who had just killed someone in a robbery, though they have always maintained that they didn't know Leaf had just committed murder. Gov. Tom Wolf last year commuted the Hortons' life sentences after Fetterman and prison officials championed their case, and the two went on to take jobs on Fetterman's Senate campaign.

Oz's campaign, though, has been happy to try to turn them into a liability for their boss, saying, "If John Fetterman cared about Pennsylvania's crime problem, he'd prove it by firing the convicted murderers he employs on his campaign." Fetterman, for his part, told the New York Times that if Republicans "destroy" his political career for advocating for people like the Hortons, "then so be it."

● Polls:

AZ-Sen: Suffolk University for the Arizona Republic: Mark Kelly (D-inc): 49, Blake Masters (R): 42, Marc Victor (L): 2

NC-Sen: GSG (D) for Cheri Beasley: Cheri Beasley (D): 46, Ted Budd (R): 46 (May: 45-45 tie)

OH-Sen: Siena College for Spectrum News: Tim Ryan (D): 46, J.D. Vance (R): 43

PA-Sen: InsiderAdvantage (R) for WTXF-TV: John Fetterman (D): 45, Mehmet Oz (R): 42

PA-Sen: Marist College: Fetterman (D): 51, Oz (R): 41

Governors

● PA-Gov: Campaign finance reports covering the period of June 7 to Sept. 19 are out, and they show that Democrat Josh Shapiro's $25.4 million haul utterly dwarfed the $3.2 million that Republican Doug Mastriano took in. Shapiro goes into the final weeks with a $10.9 million to $2.6 million cash-on-hand edge over Mastriano, who still has not so much as reserved any TV time and who recently lamented he's "[r]eally not finding a lot of support from the national-level Republican organizations."

P.S. Politico's Holly Otterbein flags that Mastriano received a $500 donation from Andrew Torba, the founder of the white supremist social network Gab. That's still far less than the $5,000 that Mastriano paid Gab in April for "campaign consulting," though.

● Polls:

AZ-Gov: Suffolk University for the Arizona Republic: Katie Hobbs (D-inc): 46, Kari Lake (R): 45

CT-Gov: Western New England University for CTInsider and WFSB: Ned Lamont (D-inc): 55, Bob Stefanowski (R): 40

ME-Gov: University of New Hampshire: Janet Mills (D-inc): 53, Paul LePage (R): 39, Sam Hunkler (I): 1

OH-Gov: Siena College for Spectrum News: Mike DeWine (R-inc): 55, Nan Whaley (D): 32

PA-Gov: InsiderAdvantage (R) for WTXF-TV: Josh Shapiro (D): 52, Doug Mastriano (R): 37

PA-Gov: Marist College: Shapiro (D): 53, Mastriano (R): 40

Quinnipiac University last week gave Lamont a similar 57-40 lead in its home state.

Early September numbers from the progressive Maine People's Resource Center showed Mills up 49-38 in a race that hasn't gotten much attention from pollsters.

House

● MT-01: Democrat Monica Tranel has publicized an internal from Impact Research that shows her trailing Republican Ryan Zinke only 45-43 in this newly-created seat in the western part of the state. This is the first poll we've seen from this 52-45 Trump constituency.

● House: The Washington Post reports that top allies of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy were involved in a serious effort to deny the GOP nod to several House candidates they feared would either threaten his power or prove to be weak general election candidates, a drive the paper says they concealed during the primaries by sending cash "from top GOP donors through organizations that do not disclose their donors or have limited public records."

Their most prominent target was North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who was a massive pain even before the far-right freshman claimed that an unidentified colleague had invited him to an "orgy" and that he'd witnessed prominent conservatives doing "a key bump of cocaine." Cawthorn lost renomination to state Sen. Chuck Edwards after a group called Results for N.C. spent $1.7 million against the incumbent, and the Post writes that two McCarthy allies were part of its effort.

The paper adds that the minority leader's people were involved in the successful drives to block Anthony Sabatini in Florida's 7th District and Carl Paladino in New York's 23rd, who were each attacked by a newly-established group called American Liberty Action PAC. Both men blamed McCarthy for what happened, and the Post writes that his allies were indeed working to stop them: "They would have been legislative terrorists whose goal was fame," explained one unnamed source.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, which is close to the GOP leadership, also openly got involved in several more primaries, though it got decidedly mixed results for the $7 million it spent. CLF's ads helped secure general election berths for California Reps. Young Kim and David Valadao; Mississippi Rep. Michael Guest; and Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei. CLF also managed to advance Morgan Luttrell through the primary for Texas' open 8th District over a candidate backed by the troublesome Freedom Caucus, while it spent $40,000 on get out the vote calls for Florida Rep. Daniel Webster.

The super PAC, though, failed to get its preferred nominees across the finish line elsewhere. In Arizona's 4th, restaurateur Kelly Cooper overcame $1.5 million in CLF spending meant to ensure that establishment favorite Tanya Wheeless was Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton's rival instead. Democrats have since launched commercials faulting Cooper for, among other things, having "compared federal law enforcement agents to Nazis and the Gestapo."

CLF also fell short in its efforts to block Karoline Leavitt in New Hampshire's 1st and Brandon Williams in New York's 22nd, while another organization it funded couldn't prevent Joe Kent from beating out Washington Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler in the top-two primary.

But CLF's worst failure is arguably in North Carolina's 1st District where its $600,000 offensive wasn't enough to stop Sandy Smith. Democrats have spent the general election running commercials focusing on the abuse allegations that surfaced against her during the May primary, including a new spot highlighting how her daughter and two former husbands have accused her of domestic violence.

Obituaries

● Mark Souder: Indiana Republican Mark Souder, who was elected to the House during the 1994 red wave but resigned in 2010 after revealing an affair with a staffer, died Monday at the age of 72. Souder, who was perhaps best known for his advocacy of abstinence education, was an ardent conservative, though he defied his party leaders in two notable occasions early in his career: Souder was part of the failed 1997 revolt against Newt Gingrich, and he voted against two of the four articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton the next year.

Souder got his start as an aide to then-Rep. Dan Coats, and in 1994 he decisively won a six-way primary to reclaim the Fort Wayne-based 4th District that Coats had once represented. Souder’s opponent was Democratic incumbent Jill Long Thompson, who pulled off a big upset in the 1989 special to replace Coats after he was appointed to replace Vice President Dan Quayle in the Senate. However, while Thompson had convincingly won her next two terms, the terrible climate for her party powered Souder to a 55-45 win in this historically Republican area.

Souder quickly became entrenched in his new seat, which was renumbered the 3rd District in the 2002 round of redistricting: The congressman only failed to win by double digits once when he turned back Democrat Tom Hayhurst 54-46 during the 2006 blue wave. However, Souder became a tea party target in 2010 after supporting the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program and later the Obama administration’s Cash for Clunkers program.

Souder ended up turning back self-funding auto dealer Bob Thomas by an unimpressive 48-34 margin, but he had very little time to enjoy his win. Just weeks later, the married congressman announced, “I sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff,” and that he’d be resigning over the scandal. Souder, whose marriage survived the ordeal, never ran for office again, though he became a regular columnist for the Indiana tip-sheet Howey Politics and wrote extensively about Fort Wayne’s local TV and baseball history.

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McConnell came closer than first reported to voting to convict Trump: book

Posted on (Updated by Jared Gans

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) came closer than previously reported to voting to convict former President Trump in the impeachment trial that followed the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, according to a new book set to be released next month. 

The Washington Post released an excerpt from “UNCHECKED: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” by the Post’s Karoun Demirjian and Politico’s Rachel Bade, that discusses how McConnell wrestled with whether to vote to convict Trump for inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. 

McConnell was pleased to see the wide range of Republicans who had turned against Trump following the riot and called on him to resign. But he was “stunned” by the speed at which the GOP turned back to support Trump, with only 10 House Republicans voting in favor of impeachment, the excerpt states. 

McConnell knew many Senate Republicans would look to him for guidance on how to vote on a motion from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) about whether the conviction of a president who was no longer in office was constitutionally permitted. 

The House voted to impeach Trump a week before the end of his term, but the Senate trial would not begin until after he left office. 

The authors based the information in the excerpt on interviews with people familiar with McConnell’s thinking and deliberations. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity to “speak candidly.” 

McConnell was drawn to voting to convict Trump, an outcome that would have potentially barred him from running for office again.

“We’ve all known that Trump is crazy,” he reportedly told aides following the insurrection. “I’m done with him. I will never speak to him again.” 

But McConnell did not know if he was up to leading a “rebellion” against Trump, according to the authors. 

He was not convinced by an argument from conservative attorney J. Michael Luttig that the Senate was constitutionally unable to hold a trial for a former president. But other members of the Senate Republican Conference thought differently.

McConnell discussed the argument with fellow GOP senators who were skeptical.

His legal adviser from Trump’s first impeachment trial, Andrew Ferguson, advised him that some constitutional scholars do not believe that the Constitution allows an impeached president to be barred from future office. However, these scholars are in the minority.

Ferguson told McConnell that Trump could use that view to run again in 2024 and sue states that keep him off the ballot, turning it into a legal battle that could lead to a political comeback. 

The authors reported that McConnell also feared turning Trump into a martyr if he was convicted.

The Senate Republican leader sent a letter to his fellow GOP senators the day after Luttig made his argument that he was open to voting to convict and firmly blamed Trump for causing the riot, according to the excerpt. 

McConnell ultimately voted to acquit the former president.

Democrats brace for life with a House GOP majority

Posted on (Updated by Alexander Bolton

Senate Democrats are bracing for the possibility for life under a divided government, with President Biden in office and a strong possibility of a Republican-controlled House.

Democrats hope they can retain their majority in the Senate, where a number of political handicappers say the party is favored. That would give Democrats more leverage and congressional support for Biden over the next two years.

But if the House does fall as expected, lawmakers expect partisan gridlock.

Some Democrats are predicting government shutdowns and standoffs over raising the federal debt limit will take center stage.  

“If Republicans win control of the House, they will not be able to govern. It’ll be a cascading nightmare of dysfunction and horrible for the country and horrible news for anybody who relies on federal funding,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. 

Murphy predicted that if Republicans are in charge of one or both chambers, “it’s probably a series of shutdowns and funding crises.” 

“This new breed of Republicans are anarchists. They don’t really believe government should be funding anything,” he added.  

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the House minority leader who is in line to become Speaker if Republicans win the lower chamber, is more allied with former President Trump than his Senate GOP counterpart, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).  

McCarthy sided with Trump last year when the former president called on Republicans to block legislation to raise the debt limit, which would have put the nation at risk of default.

Not a single House Republican voted to raise the debt ceiling in October and it fell to McConnell and his leadership team and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to provide the votes to keep the United States fulfilling its debt obligations.  

Trump, who retains a strong grip on the Republican base, slammed McConnell for compromising with Democrats, arguing that GOP lawmakers should have sought to paralyze Biden’s agenda.  

Trump presided over a 35-day government shutdown at the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019 — the longest in U.S. history — which was triggered by his demand to spend nearly $6 billion to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.  

FiveThirtyEight.com, a political forecasting website, gives Republicans a 7 in 10 chance of winning the House majority and Democrats a 7 in 10 chance of keeping control of the Senate.  

Another Democratic senator who requested anonymity to comment frankly on the likely result of the November election, said if Republicans capture the House, it will yield “a series of investigations” of the Biden administration.  

“Many want to impeach Joe Biden. It would be a recipe for chaos and for gridlock,” the lawmaker said.

Several House conservatives have already introduced articles of impeachment against Biden, alleging “high crimes” related to his handling of border security and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last year to has management of the coronavirus pandemic.  

Conservatives are signaling they will attempt to block funding for the Internal Revenue Service to hire an estimated 87,000 new employees, which was provided for in the Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats passed in August under the budget reconciliation process.  

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a prominent Trump ally, penned an op-ed for Fox News with Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) urging fellow Republicans to “stop caving to Democrats” and warned “under no circumstances should any Republican in the new majorities next year vote to fund the Democrats’ newly passed army of 87,000 new IRS officials to audit and harass Americans.”  

Some Trump allies still haven’t given up hope of repealing the Affordable Care Act, which was one of Trump’s top domestic priorities after taking office in 2017.  

“If we’re going to repeal and replace ObamaCare — I still think we need to fix our health care system — we need to have the plan ahead of time so that once we get in office, we can implement it immediately, not knock around like we did last time and fail,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who is running for reelection, told Breitbart News Radio earlier this year.  

When Republicans took control of the House after the 2010 midterms, then-Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), whose influence in the party has grown significantly over the last decade, proposed $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years. His proposed Spending Reduction Act would have cut nondefense discretionary spending dramatically.  

In April of that year, then-President Obama and then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) flirted with a government shutdown before Democrats finally agreed to $39 billion spending cuts in a late-night deal.

The Congress also came perilously close to defaulting on the federal debt in August of 2011, a few months after House Republicans captured the House. Fiscal disaster was averted by a compromise that McConnell and Biden, who was then vice president, helped craft.   

Senate Democrats say they hope such standoffs will be avoided.

“I think we’ve learned that shutdowns really are a lose-lose [proposition,]” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who came to Congress in 2011. “Certainly some House Republicans have learned. Whether all of them or the newly elected ones remains to be seen.” 

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said he’s optimistic about working with House Republicans in the next Congress to pass the annual defense authorization bill. But he expressed concerns that Trump allies in the House will try to undermine the professionalism and political neutrality of the military.  

Trump tried to shake up the Pentagon’s senior ranks and install loyalists into key positions after he lost the 2020 election to Biden, and Reed fears that Trump allies in the House may still have that on their agenda.  

“One of my concerns is less the NDAA, it’s the growing attack on the military as an institution. I just saw where the Arizona candidate for the Senate called for firing all the generals and putting in conservatives. That’s not how we [run] our army. It’s based on competence and experience and the judgment of others, their superior military officers,” Reed said.   

Blake Masters, the Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, has repeatedly called for the across-the-board firing of generals between August of 2021 and March of this year, according to a recent report by Vice.com.  

Despite the growing Democratic concerns of having to interact with a House Republican majority in 2023, some Democratic senators think they’ll be able to find narrow areas of common ground.  

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) cited bipartisan support for the chips and science bill that passed both chambers this year with bipartisan majorities.  

“Of course there will be areas where we can work together,” he said.  

“They’ll be doing a lot of stuff for show,” he added, anticipating new investigations of the Biden administration. 

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) noted he is working with Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) to restore the pensions of salaried retirees in Delphi who were terminated when General Motors declared bankruptcy in 2009.  

“There will be ways. They’re not all crazy. Some of them are,” he said of House Republicans.  

Brown, however, insisted the political winds are shifting in Democrats’ favor, even in the battle for the House.  

“I think things are changing and these are close races,” he said. “The only thing that would cost us the House is redistricting,” referring to the changes to congressional maps made after the 2020 census.  

Florida Senator Rick Scott Tells Mitch McConnell To Stop Trash-Talking Candidates

Posted on by Becky Noble

As the midterm election battle heats up, establishment Republicans seem to have a problem, and it’s not former President Donald Trump. At least not totally.

It is other Republicans who do not have a problem standing up to them (many of those being tied to Donald Trump.)

The latest example is Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL). Scott is also the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate campaign arm of the GOP.

Scott is not pleased with some comments made last month by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

RELATED: MAGA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Calls For Biden’s Impeachment Following ‘President Butterbeans’ Divisive Speech

Demeaning Candidates

Mitch McConnell was at the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Luncheon when he was asked about the possibility of Republicans taking over control of the Senate in November.

McConnell stated that there was a better chance of the House being taken over by the GOP than the Senate. But it was this knock on the candidates chosen by Republican voters that have drawn some ire: “Senate races are just different, they’re statewide. Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”

In response, Scott stated that he and McConnell have “a strategic disagreement” about that.

During an interview with Politico, Scott said:

“We have great candidates. He wants to do the same thing I want to do: I want to get a majority. And I think it’s important that we’re all cheerleaders for our candidates. If you trash talk our candidates … you hurt our chances of winning, and you hurt our candidates’ ability to raise money. I know they’re good candidates, because I’ve been talking to them and they’re working their butts off.”

Scott added that negative talk about GOP candidates was “not productive.”

RELATED: Trump Vows Pardons, Government Apology For January 6 Defendants

Trump Also Responds

At the time of McConnell’s comments, Donald Trump also had some thoughts on the leader of the Senate Republicans bad mouthing candidates, many of whom just happened to be endorsed by Trump.

It’s the latest episode in an ongoing feud of sorts between Trump and McConnell. Their back and forth tends to illustrate the growing pains going on within the party. Old Guard establishment types who have been in Washington D.C. forever and don’t want to confront Democrats on anything, versus a new generation of no-nonsense Republicans who have no problem taking on the Democrats and winning.

Trump stated, “Why do Republicans Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard-working Republican candidates for the United States Senate? This is such an affront to honor and to leadership.”

Earlier the same week, Trump had called for the GOP to immediately oust McConnell. He called McConnell “a pawn for the Democrats.” The second statement on Truth Social was in response to a story by the The Federalist, which claimed that McConnell and his wife, former Trump Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, had “spent decades getting rich on China.”

Trump also said of the McConnells, “The Democrats have Mitch McConnell and his lovely wife, Elaine ‘Coco’ Chao, over a barrel. He and she will never be prosecuted, as per the last paragraphs of this story, as long as he continues to give the Radical Left the Trillions and Trillions of Dollars that they constantly DEMAND.”

RELATED: Federal Testing Shows Shuttering Schools Failed American Students

Maybe Mitch Could Start Helping

Mitch McConnell has made it clear that not only does he not like Donald Trump, but he doesn’t like Trump-endorsed candidates as well. The former is fine. The second is not, for a person in his position.

McConnell is going to have to answer whether he really wants to win in November and retake the Senate, or continue to be a puppet for Chuck Schumer and the Democrats and go along to get along.

While there is still a way to go, GOP candidates in key Senate races could use the boost. According to Real Clear Politics average polls, in Arizona, Democrat Senator Mark Kelly is up by six points to GOP challenger Blake Masters. 

In Georgia, the race is tightening, with Sen. Raphael Warnock up by just one point over Herschel Walker. In Ohio, J.D. Vance is up by 3.7 points over Sen. Tim Ryan. In the all-important Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, far-left Democrat Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is up by 6.5 points over Dr. Mehmet Oz, and in Wisconsin, Democrat Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is up over Sen. Ron Johnson by 4.3 points.

Maybe Mitch McConnell could stop playing mean girls with Donald Trump long enough to help some Republicans win.

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Trump slams McConnell as ‘disloyal’ amid Jan. 6 hearings

Posted on (Updated by Alexander Bolton

Former President Trump on Thursday vented his anger with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) during the House select Jan. 6 committee’s hearing, slamming him as a “disloyal sleazebag” despite the recent victories McConnell helped secure for Trump’s legacy.

Trump appeared to lose his temper after the Jan. 6 committee played a clip of McConnell's speech on the Senate floor during Trump’s second impeachment trial in which he blamed the former president for inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

“Is this the same Mitch McConnell who was losing big in Kentucky, and came to the White House to BEG me for an Endorsement and help? Without me he would have lost in a landslide. A disloyal sleaze bag!” Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media platform.  

Trump appeared to be referring to the 2020 election, but McConnell never faced any serious danger from his Democratic challenger Amy McGrath. He wound up winning a seventh Senate term by a margin of nearly 20 points.

Trump’s vitriolic attack on the GOP leader came only a week after Democrats formally abandoned their plans to reverse the 2017 tax cuts, one of Trump’s biggest domestic accomplishments.  

McConnell mentioned the importance of preserving Trump’s tax cuts at a press conference on Tuesday.  

“One day we think they’re going to leave taxes alone, which of course would preserve the 2017 tax bill, the next day they’re not so sure,” McConnell said of Democrats’ plans to move a budget reconciliation package.  

McConnell also played a key role in helping Trump add three conservative justices to the Supreme Court — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — who joined a 6-3 conservative majority in overturning Roe v. Wade last month. 

Yet, Trump remains fixated on McConnell’s refusal to acknowledge his unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen as well as on the GOP leader’s fiery denunciation of Trump’s actions leading to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.  

McConnell excoriated Trump at the end of his second impeachment trial for what he called a “disgraceful dereliction of duty.”  

The Jan. 6 committee on Thursday played a clip of McConnell speaking on the Senate floor in which he said “there’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” 

“The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of the president,” he said. “Having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”  

McConnell has since declined to speak about Trump or even mention him by name in public. 

On Tuesday when asked whether he would oppose Trump's candidacy for president in 2024 if he runs again, McConnell only predicted that the former president would face a lot of competition for the nomination. 

“I think we’re going to have a crowded field for president. I assume most of that will unfold later and people will be picking their candidates in a crowded primary field,” he told reporters.

‘Misled the American people’: AOC calls out Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on lying about abortion views

Posted on by Aysha Qamar

As the country continues to process the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that made abortion legal nationwide, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on the Senate Monday to question whether Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath about their views on the case.

During their Senate confirmation hearings, both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said that they viewed Roe v. Wade as a settled “precedent” that had been “reaffirmed many times.” However, when the time came to uphold that precedent and vote, the two thought otherwise.

Ocasio-Cortez joined with Rep. Ted Lieu to write a letter to the Senate asking them to investigate whether Kavanaugh and Gorsuch lied under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee in order to become confirmed.

"Multiple Supreme Court Justices misled the American people during their confirmation hearings about their views on Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood," Ocasio-Cortez and Lieu said in the letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. "At least two of them, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, directly lied to Senators.

"We respect the right of individual Justices to have their own views on various constitutional issues," the letter continued. "But we cannot have a system where Justices lie about their views in order to get confirmed. That makes a mockery of the confirmation power, and of the separation of powers."

We cannot allow Supreme Court nominees lying and/or misleading the Senate under oath to go unanswered. Both GOP & Dem Senators stated SCOTUS justices misled them. This cannot be accepted as precedent. Doing so erodes rule of law, delegitimizes the court, and imperils democracy. https://t.co/yZW6BKnqFG

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 11, 2022

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Following their vote in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, which overturned Roe v. Wade, several lawmakers who voted to confirm Gorsuch in 2017 and Kavanaugh in 2018 expressed concern at the consequential outcome, saying they felt misled by the two justices, Business Insider reported.

”This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon," Sen. Susan Collins, an abortion rights supporter, said in a statement.

"I trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh when they testified under oath that they also believed Roe v. Wade was settled legal precedent and I am alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans," Sen. Joe Manchin said in a statement. While personally against abortion, Manchin supports legislation to protect abortion rights.

The letter isn’t the first time Ocasio-Cortez questioned the SCOTUS justices lying during their respected confirmations.

In her argument that the two lied, Ocasio-Cortez emphasized the point that even Republicans who supported Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were shocked by their recent votes. She added that lying under oath is a serious offense that she believes calls for impeachment.

"To allow that to stand is to allow it to happen," Ocasio-Cortez told NBC News on June 26. "What makes it particularly dangerous is that it sends a blaring signal to all future nominees that they can now lie to duly elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure Supreme Court confirmations and seats on the Supreme Court."

Lieu also previously accused some justices of lying about their stance on Roe v. Wade. The day the Dobbs’ decision was announced, Lieu posted a message about a Gallup poll that found confidence in the Supreme Court’s support for abortion rights was at a low.

"Multiple conservative Supreme Court Justices led the American people to believe that Roe v. Wade was settled precedent during their confirmation hearings," Lieu wrote in the June 24 tweet. "The American people now know these Justices lied. And now public confidence in the Court is at its lowest level in history."

Both Lieu and Ocasio-Cortez vowed to fight for abortion rights following the official verdict.

"People will die because of this decision," Ocasio-Cortez said. "And we will never stop until abortion rights are restored in the United States of America."

Florida man revels in vexing his GOP colleagues. His name isn’t Donald Trump

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Leadership abhors a vacuum and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is Exhibit A. First, McConnell had the chance to finish off Donald Trump’s political future during his second impeachment but failed to seal the deal.

Next, McConnell had a chance to give Americans a Republican vision they could vote for in November, but he demurred—choosing instead to offer nothing for which Republicans could be held to account as a cynical campaign strategy.

Now, McConnell’s getting burned on both fronts—by Scott and Trump alike. Trump is getting his jollies by carpet bombing the 2022 landscape with endorsements at will. At the same time, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who's running the Senate GOP's bid to retake the upper chamber, has pounced on McConnell's unsteady grip on the caucus.

After Scott dropped his disastrous 11-point plan to "Rescue America" last month on "an unsuspecting party,” he relished the upheaval he created, according to a delightful Washington Post account.

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Scott used a Wall Street Journal op-ed to malign his critics as "careerists in Washington" and jeered, "Bring it on." He also restructured the National Republican Senatorial Committee's fundraising efforts to line his own campaign coffers and then punched back at his detractors.

“We don’t spend much time worrying about criticisms from anonymous Republican consultants who lost the Senate last cycle and who have gotten rich off maintaining the status quo,” Chris Hartline, NRSC communications director and Scott campaign spokesperson, told the Post.

But the pugnacity of Scott and his allies doesn't reverse the fact that he's adding significant deadweight to GOP efforts in November.

For one, he sucking up a lot of money for himself. Donors at some of his events (including in Florida) have been asked to divide their first $10,800 between Scott's campaign account and his own leadership PAC before gifting more to the NRSC account.

The Senate GOP committee is pretty flush at $33 million—$13 million more than at the same point in 2020 and more than twice as much in 2018.

But Scott isn't up for reelection and, as one GOP strategist noted, “He is doing it in a state where there is an incumbent senator who is in-cycle." That would be Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

But that's just one example plaguing what colleagues joke has become the "National Rick Scott Committee." Another change includes Scott whittling down the cut for candidates who let the NRSC fundraise off their images in digital ads. Candidates used to split the haul 50-50 with the committee along with getting donors' names but, under Scott, they get just 10% of donations plus donor names.

Overall, the takeaway among many of the colleagues Scott is supposed to be helping is that "Rick Scott seems to care a lot more about his political future than the Senate incumbents he is supposed to be working for,” according to one anonymous source.

But one group that is extremely pleased with Scott's efforts is Senate Democrats.

“We’ve got three words for him: Keep it up,” said David Bergstein, the communications director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which has been readily highlighting Scott's plan to raise taxes on more than 100 million American households as well as sunset Medicare and Social Security.

"No NRSC chair has done more for Senate Democrats than Rick Scott,” Bergstein added.

Someone else who applauds Scott's self-serving actions is a fellow Florida man who loves anyone and anything that becomes a thorn in McConnell's side.

“I don’t agree with everything in the plan, but Rick is a good man,” Donald Trump said.

Trump’s statement, however, surely says more about his hatred for McConnell than it does Scott's stewardship of the NRSC.

“I’d take Romney over McConnell,” Trump recently said of Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who became the lone GOP senator to vote in favor of Trump's first impeachment. “I think he’d do a better job, and I think Romney is a lowlife.”

For his part, McConnell would be in a much better position to put Scott's GOP agenda to rest if he would bother to pound out a plan of his own. But the fact is, Scott dared to tell Americans what Republicans stand for and McConnell hasn't. And there's really no telling who will be running the Senate GOP caucus if Trump runs again in 2024 and wins.

McConnell can thank himself for that too.