Donald Trump’s MAGA movement with its scary online shock troops has long since subdued the Republican Party, and on November 5, it won a solid election victory that bagged the White House and very likely control of both chambers of Congress. Trump’s minions are itching to take over the executive branch and wreak havoc with federal agencies. But without too much question, the most hidebound of Washington institutions is the U.S. Senate, under either party’s leadership. This week, the now-reigning Senate Republican conference is meeting to elect a successor to Mitch McConnell as leader. McConnell was a constant source of annoyance to Trump as president and as party chieftain. While for the most part he ultimately did whatever Trump needed him to do, he did so with the bare minimum of respect. So the new administration will be happy to see Mitch self-demoted to back-bencher, and whoever wins the leadership election (the longtime front-runners are senators John Thune of South Dakota and John Cornyn of Texas) will be an improvement over the wily Kentuckian.
But some of the more eager MAGA leaders want to bring the Senate to heel right away, and they have united to promote the long-shot leadership candidacy of Florida senator Rick Scott, who unsuccessfully challenged McConnell two years ago and has been cultivating the impression that he will give Trump an ally as submissive as House Speaker Mike Johnson. As Politico Playbook reports, Scott is benefiting from an online blitzkrieg of support:
Just days after celebrating Trump’s thundering presidential victory, top MAGA luminaries this weekend set their sights on swinging another election: winning the top Senate leadership post for Rick Scott. Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, Charlie Kirk. One by one, each declared that Trump’s election romp necessitates a complete overhaul atop the Senate GOP, fingering the Floridian as the perfect man for the job — spurning John Cornyn and John Thune, the more-establishment types considered the front-runners in the race. “Only Rick Scott understands the urgency of the moment,” tweeted CPAC honcho Matt Schlapp, capturing the tenor of the online campaign.
All else being equal, there probably isn’t enough time for even these powerful Trump associates to impose Scott on a largely unwilling Senate GOP conference, given the support Thune and Cornyn have built over years while waiting for old Mitch to retire. There’s also Scott’s own unsavory reputation for showboating and his less-than-successful 2022 tenure as head of the Senate Republican campaign arm. Yes, he’s being backed by Florida colleague Marco Rubio and some of the Senate’s more abrasive conservatives (e.g., Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Ron Johnson). But as Playbook reports, there’s a palpable backlash among senators at the perception they are being stampeded by self-important social-media types into abandoning their independence entirely.
It’s obvious what Scott needs to pull off the coup: an open endorsement from the president-elect. The closest he’s come to intervention in the leadership contest so far is a remark demanding that Senate Republicans abandon their traditional opposition to “recess appointments,” a device whereby a president can avoid the inconvenience of Senate confirmation fights by making appointments when the chamber isn’t in session. As Punchbowl News observes, if this was a probe by Trump to determine Senate Republican willingness to do things his way, it seems to have worked:
Out of the blue: Trump on Sunday demanded that the next majority leader commit to allowing recess appointments. Scott quickly fell in line, pledging to do “whatever it takes” to get Trump’s nominees confirmed. Thune and Cornyn also signaled they’d make confirmation of Trump’s nominees a top priority, including looking at recess appointments.
McConnell opposed recess appointments, which are constitutionally dubious at best, but if Trump was simply creating a test alleged RINOs might flunk, Thune and Cornyn probably passed. It would appear that nothing less than outspoken support for Scott would suffice at this point. But it’s worth noting that prediction markets (probably more sensitive to what people like Musk and Carlson and Kirk are saying than to the obscure internal dynamics of the U.S. Senate) are rating Scott as a shoo-in. No matter what happens, we’re seeing a demonstration of MAGA aggressiveness that will likely overwhelm all sorts of institutions less resistant to change than the upper chamber of Congress.
