“To believe that Kevin McCarthy is going to be speaker, you have to believe he’s going to get votes in the next six weeks that he couldn’t get in six years,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz.
“One hundred eighty-eight is a long way from 218. I think this just opens up the opportunity for anyone interested to let us know what their vision is,” said Gaetz’s fellow Freedom Caucus member Rep. Bob Good.
Tuesday’s other big Republican battle came at the Senate Republican meeting at which Sen. Rick Scott announced he would challenge Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Scott’s challenge is not business as usual: This is the first contested race for the leadership of either party in the Senate since 1996. And it came with a clear attack on McConnell’s strategy. Voters “are begging us to tell them what we will do when we are in charge,” Scott wrote in the letter announcing his run. “Unfortunately, we have continued to elect leadership who refuses to do that and elicits attacks on anyone that does. That is clearly not working, and it’s time for bold change.”
“If you liked Republicans losing Senate campaigns, while saddling the party with tax increases and Medicare cuts, then you’re going to love Rick Scott’s campaign for leader,” a McConnell adviser responded in a statement. “It does have a constituency but unfortunately for him it’s entirely within the confines of the Democratic conference.”
McConnell’s own public stance is impatience and disdain. “I want to repeat again—I have the votes, I will be elected,” he told reporters after the meeting. “The only issue is whether we do it sooner or later.”
The meeting reportedly turned into an “airing of grievances,” with Scott, as the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, coming in for plenty of criticism along with McConnell. Some Republicans pressed for an audit of the NRSC, the implication being that Scott may not have made the best use of the $253.3 million it spent since the beginning of 2021.
“If you’re going to make this about assessing blame for losing an election, I don’t know how the NRSC chairman gets off the hook,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, a McConnell supporter, said.
“There was finger-pointing at the leader,” one senator told The Washington Post. “There was finger-pointing at the NRSC. There was finger-pointing at Trump. There was finger-pointing at the candidates who had gone too far to the right and denied elections in the primaries. There was a lot of finger-pointing going on.”
Allies of McConnell and Scott, meanwhile, are viciously laying into each other on social media and in media quotes. Expenditures by both the NRSC and the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC linked to McConnell, are a major source of contention, and representatives of both organizations are attacking each other not just over what happened in the lead-up to the election but over what they’re doing in Georgia’s Senate runoff now.
“Watched Monday Night Football here in Georgia last night, and the evening news. Schumer’s superpacs running tons of ads attacking Walker,” a Scott adviser tweeted. “McConnell’s superpac running zero ads attacking Warnock. Have they given up?”
“Your TV buy was barely 350 GRP in ATL,” the head of the Senate Leadership Fund responded. “But don’t worry little buddy—we’re used to covering for you.”
Keep it up, everyone! It’s fun to watch, but also, please feel free to let the infighting and backbiting distract you from Georgia.
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Laura Clawson
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