'This is about attention': Mike Lee's MAGA crusade is driving his colleagues crazy

Among online activists and in some corners of the Republican Party, Mike Lee is being heralded as a MAGA champion willing to pressure his own party to embrace hardball tactics or risk political suicide.

But inside the Senate, the Utahn’s scorched-earth, hyper-online methods are sparking a wave of mostly private animosity from GOP colleagues who believe his plan to push through legislation overhauling how federal elections are conducted is ill-conceived and potentially harmful to the party’s chances in the midterms.

They believe he doesn’t have a realistic path to passing the SAVE America Act, and they view him as seeking personal attention at the cost of sparking an ongoing intraparty feud, according to five Republicans granted anonymity to speak candidly about their colleague.

“That seems to be a self-serving attempt at elevating yourself at the expense of your Republican colleagues, and I don’t have any patience for that sort of stuff,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said in an interview about Lee’s social media strategy. Tillis, a retiring lawmaker who is not one of the five who spoke privately, lamented a lack of “strategic clarity” from Lee on the endgame for the elections debate.

Lee, however, shows no hint of self-doubt in news conferences and floor speeches — and, more importantly, late-night X streams and a constant stream of social-media posts — that the SAVE America Act is anything less than a make-or-break moment for American democracy.

“It would be a suicidal move for us as Senate Republicans, for Republicans in general, if we don’t put everything we’ve got into this,” Lee said at a news conference this week. ”We need to debate this as long as it takes to get it done.”

Lee's office did not respond to a request for an interview with the senator or a detailed message seeking comment about the criticism he’s facing from colleagues.

‘He’s hurting us’

The inside-outside split that has emerged in recent weeks is the culmination of a long political evolution for Lee’s persona. He was once viewed as a bookish conservative with a libertarian bent but has now emerged as the Senate GOP’s most inveterate social-media poster — and a darling of the online right.

But it’s his strategy around the elections bill, which President Donald Trump has called his “No. 1 priority,” that has soured some of his relationships inside the Senate. Some Republican colleagues compared him to Sen. Rand Paul — the Kentucky gadfly who also has a history of sparking frustration within the Senate GOP ranks.

Republicans have circulated Lee’s online posts, including one saying that if a senator doesn’t support his tactics to pass the elections bill “you might need to replace them.” That kind of talk has some suggesting that Lee, who was part of a bipartisan coalition that helped pass a criminal justice bill during Trump’s first term, will have a hard time getting legislation passed in the future.

Frustrations have grown to the point that some GOP senators are privately wondering if they could remove him as chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, according to two Republicans. Several other colleagues dismissed the talk as blowing off steam.

“He’s hurting us,” one of the two Republicans said.

Lee appeared to distance himself from the social media tactics when a POLITICO reporter asked him during a news conference this week about concerns from his Republican colleagues and whether any had approached him directly.

“Every time I talk to activists, people who support this, I’m like a broken record telling them, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and I recommend encouragement and focusing on the positive elements of the bill,” Lee said. “They do what they do. It is what it is.”

Tillis brushed off Lee’s answer: “You’re telling people to be nice when you post a statement that says you should challenge them in primaries? How does that work?”

With a swath of GOP senators dead-set against bypassing the 60-vote filibuster threshold, Lee has argued that forcing Democrats into a “talking filibuster” will ultimately force them to negotiate and capitulate. That doesn’t make sense to many of his colleagues, who don’t see the Democrats ever providing enough votes to pass the bill.

And they fear Lee is selling a fantasy to his online followers, who believe failure should be at least partially pinned on the weakness of Republicans, not the opposition of Democrats.

“It’s the clicks,” one Republican senator said in an interview when asked what Lee wants to accomplish. “He goes too far. … He has almost no self-awareness.”

‘Maximum success in the Senate’

But Lee’s supporters believe his push has gotten at least some results. Senate Majority Leader John Thune agreed to call up the bill and start debate without a clear end date — something that is next to unheard-of in the modern Senate. And GOP ears perked up this week when Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that Democrats weren’t opposed to photo ID requirements.

Rachel Bovard, a former Lee staffer who is now a vice president at the Conservative Partnership Institute, said her former boss is seeking to “represent a part of the base that feels unheard.”

“It’s encouraging I think for a lot of people to see that a single United States senator can still speak for them, the Senate still speaks for them,” she said.

Lee himself credited pressure from his army of online supporters for Thune’s decision to keep the Senate working through this weekend. He has credited the majority leader so far for implementing a version of the talking filibuster.

“Bullcrap if anyone says X isn’t real,” he said during a late-night stream hosted on the social-media platform this week.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who authored the SAVE America Act in the House, said he and Lee worked together to set the bill up for “maximum success in the Senate procedurally — and now Mike is single-handedly trying to make the U.S. Senate actually work and debate.”

“To those Senators saying Mike Lee is doing this for attention — it’s utter bullshit and they should have the cajones to call the President and tell him that,” he added in a text message. “But it’s the Senate, so.”

Several Senate Republicans have praised Lee online and as they’ve appeared alongside him at news conferences this week. But many other Republican colleagues have kept their distance, not understanding how he intends to bring the fight to a close. A sixth GOP senator granted anonymity was not personally critical of Lee but described the process he unleashed as a “very chaotic situation.”

“He gets stuck on things,” the senator said, describing Lee as an adamant believer in the policy he is pushing.

As Thune outlined his plans for the bill during a closed-door Senate GOP lunch last week — which were widely understood to involve eventually subjecting it to a 60-vote hurdle — Lee was largely silent, according to three people with knowledge of the meeting.

Leadership ambitions?

Thune and Lee have kept in close touch behind the scenes as the Senate has taken up the bill.

“I think the key is to keep people’s expectations realistic and not overpromise. And that’s what I’m trying to do,” Thune said in an interview about how he felt Lee was handling the debate. He declined to comment on whether Lee was doing that.

While Lee has repeatedly asserted this week that he and his allies are winning, he also acknowledged that it would not be “good for the movement” if he started “planning for failure now.”

“If we do our job, and … Republican senators do their jobs, we will win,” he added.

Some of those Republican senators have spent time recently wondering about Lee’s motivations.

Four of the GOP senators said they believed Lee has higher ambitions. He once flirted with a leadership bid, something some colleagues believe he still aspires to, while others pointed to a potential Cabinet spot as his ultimate goal. Some of Lee’s most fervent online supporters have floated a run for Senate majority leader, with one raising the Supreme Court as a landing spot during a recent online meetup.

“I think he’s frankly very frustrated that he’s not more than he is, that he feels like he’s passed over,” the first GOP senator said. Another added, “I think he looks in the mirror and thinks he’s leadership.”

While Lee has retweeted negative commentary about Thune from other users on social media, he has also encouraged his online followers to presume Thune is well-intentioned and told them that Thune was “handling this very well right now.”

Bovard was among several Republicans who dismissed the idea that Lee is using the elections fight as a political springboard.

“It’s kind of hilarious, because the Senate is so dead … and it’s so broken that if any senator leans into something and actually cares about something, the assumption is [it’s] because they’re running” for another office, Bovard said, adding that being the majority leader “seems like kind of a miserable job.”

Three Republicans said the point is moot. Given the way he’s operated inside the GOP conference, they predicted, Lee cannot win a leadership race. But during an X stream shortly after midnight Friday supporters told Lee that majority leader is exactly the job they wanted him to have.

“Look,” he said, “let’s just get the bill passed.”