Rick Scott for Senate Majority Leader!
As Republican senators meet today to choose a new majority leader, it is vital that they select someone with both the principles and guts to deliver on President Donald J. Trump’s America First agenda. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida is that man. His private-sector business acumen and gubernatorial experience strongly suggest that he will have the philosophical coherence to promote conservative, pro-market, limited-government legislation and the toughness to steer it through the curmudgeonly shoals of the U.S. Senate.
Alas, Scott’s rivals for the leadership post — John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota — too often have joined the spectacularly lackluster and thankfully outgoing Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to do the dirty work for Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. Rather than confront Schumer and the Democrats, these three stooges repeatedly rounded up enough soft Republicans to give Schumer what he wanted, usually in exchange for nothing.
Consider the June 1, 2023, vote to increase the debt limit. McConnell, Cornyn, and Thune all decided to keep calm and pump the red ink. And what did these Republicans get in return for pulling Schumer out of a tight spot?
Bipartisanship!
Rick Scott saw right through this nonsense and voted against this Big Government giveaway.
Three major legislative scorecards prove that Rick Scott is right, and Cornyn and Thune are wrong, for this crucial job.
The American Conservative Union/CPAC Foundation Ratings, published by the folks behind the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, document parliamentary votes with a 0 percent score as most liberal and 100 percent as most conservative. The other ratings discussed here operate likewise.
Chart by Deroy Murdock
McConnell’s lifetime score is a decent 86 percent. Sadly, that reflects far more good votes early in his career and less his weak showing in later years. His 2023 score is just 68 percent. Thune has deteriorated, from 83 percent lifetime to a piddling 71 percent last year. Cornyn’s pleasing 87 percent lifetime rating looks great. For 2023, less so: 79 percent. As for Scott, his numbers are as sunny as the state he represents: Lifetime 90 percent and a bright 88 percent last year.
“CPAC Foundation’s ratings show Rick Scott to be the clear choice among the senators running for Majority Leader,” said ACU/CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp. “Senator Scott has a strong record of opposing Big Government spending policies, which stands in contrast to the other senators in the race.
“Senator Rick Scott is also the only candidate who has voted to take on the deep state by voting to reform FISA after it was used to target the Trump campaign,” Schlapp added.
“We are definitely supporting Senator Rick Scott,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh told Fox Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo on Monday. “He is the voice of change in the Senate, and he will be the most effective leader at implementing President Trump’s agenda because he believes it… He will stand up for the new Republicans that the American people sent to Washington and work with President Trump to get the changes that the American people want to see done right away. The great thing about Rick Scott is he knows both the Senate, he knows the Executive Branch as a former governor, and he has been a solid conservative across the board.”
Club for Growth’s Congressional Scorecard illustrates McIntosh’s point: While McConnell’s lifetime score is a drab 70 percent, he fell to a dismal 47 percent last year. Thune’s 72 percent lifetime rating is ho-hum. His 59 percent for 2023 is even worse. Cornyn’s lifetime score is a bit better than Thune’s at 77 percent, but he tumbled and went splat, right beside Thune at 59 percent. As for Scott, his lifetime CFG figure is a robust 88 percent. In 2023, he performed nearly as well at 85 percent.
“The scorecards of the leading conservative and liberty-minded organizations all paint the same picture in their rankings of the candidates for Senate leadership,” Fred McGrath, president of the Institute for Legislative Analysis, told me. “In recent years, it is clearly Senator Rick Scott who has the best track record of adhering to conservative and limited-government principles in his floor votes.”
Unlike ACU and CFG, the two-year-old ILA has not been around long enough to issue lifetime legislative ratings. However, its appraisals for 2022 and 2023 find McConnell pathetically voting with the Left and Right almost equally often in 2022 — just 48.84 percent of the time with conservatives. Mitch McConnell dragged himself up to vote the Right way 66.04 percent in 2023. John Thune‘s equivalent statistics were 74.42 percent, slipping to 71.43 percent. John Cornyn posted a weak 69.23 percent in 2022 before improving to 77.36 percent last year. Meanwhile, just as McGrath described him, Scott started with a strong 81.40 percent in 2022 and delivered an even more solid 85.71 percent in 2023.
“The ILA’s policy categorization system reveals that the candidates for majority leader are divided the most philosophically on tax and fiscal issues,” McGrath added. “While Senator Scott has a record of fighting back against much of the out-of-control spending, it is largely a flip of a coin on whether Senators Cornyn or Thune will vote with radical progressives or constitutional conservatives on issues relating to taxes and spending.”
The numbers confirm McGrath’s point: ILA gives Thune a frightfully mezzo-mezzo 51.31 percent in its tax and fiscal category rating. Cornyn is microscopically better at 52.78 percent. Meanwhile, when it comes to keeping taxes low and spending in check, Scott scores a significantly more appealing 73.21 percent.
Unfortunately, Thune and Cornyn resemble Arthur Laffer and Milton Friedman compared to the “why is he still here?” Mitch McConnell. His ILA Tax and Fiscal rating is a self-humiliating 26.67 percent. McGrath calls this performance “insanely horrendous.” If anything, McGrath is too polite.
That last statistic underscores the importance of lowering the curtain on the Mitch McConnell leadership era, with all deliberate speed.
Rick Scott’s stewardship of the Senate Republican majority cannot come soon enough.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.
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