The National Republican Senatorial Committee “was run basically as a Rick Scott super PAC, where they didn’t want or need to input any Republican senators whatsoever,” former McConnell chief of staff Josh Holmes told The Wall Street Journal. “That’s a huge break from recent history where members have been pretty intimately involved.”
Holmes wasn’t the only one to trash Scott’s leadership to the WSJ. “It seems to me from the outside looking in that they are much more concerned about chasing headlines and advancing Rick Scott’s political ambitions than they are making a positive impact on Senate races,” former NRSC executive director Kevin McLaughlin said.
Scott’s side is lashing out, too. NRSC spokesman Chris Hartline went on the record with the explosive allegation that McConnell allies spent months “constantly trashing our candidates publicly and privately, and telling donors not to give to us or our campaigns.”
A Scott adviser told the WSJ that there was plenty of blame to go around, “But insecure small people never accept responsibility for failure.”
The level of white-hot fury on both sides is clearly on display in the simple fact that these people are allowing their names to be attached to their quotes, rather than saying the same things under labels like “Republican strategist” and “top GOP staffer.”
In a Sunday Fox News appearance, Scott himself said, “The leadership in the Republican Senate says, ‘No, you cannot have a plan. We’re just going to run against how bad the Democrats are’ and actually then they cave in to the Democrats.”
Scott was referring there to his plan to “rescue America” by increasing taxes on low-income households, abolishing the Department of Education and privatizing education, and threatening the existence of Social Security, among other points. It was deeply unpopular, and McConnell pushed back against running on it for very good reason. But Scott apparently still thinks that running on a tax increase for around 100 million working-class people would have been a winning message, making the Republican failure to take the Senate all McConnell’s fault.
The thing is, they’re probably equally evil, but McConnell is smarter than Scott.
McConnell himself isn’t commenting right now, but he got in a little dig back in August when he said, “I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different—they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”
While their aides and allies trade blame, McConnell is preparing for a Senate leadership election that many in the party have said should be delayed. Scott has backed a little bit away from a challenge to McConnell, but said Sunday that he’s “not going to take anything off the table.” And they’re going to have to spend the next two years in the minority together. That should be fun for both of them.
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Laura Clawson
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