GOP Senators Slow to Back Rick Scott’s ‘Rescue America’ Agenda

Most Republicans agree with Mitch McConnell: It’s better to run against Joe Biden’s record.

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President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday evening highlighted one of the biggest dilemmas Senate Republicans will face ahead of the midterms: whether to unveil a concrete GOP agenda before Election Day or simply let the Biden administration’s legislative record and poor approval ratings speak for themselves. 

GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida is advocating the former, and unveiled last week an 11-point “Rescue America” plan detailing a slate of legislative issues Republicans should focus on moving forward. “The American people are very likely to put Republicans in control of the Senate and House in 2022,” Scott wrote in a letter introducing his plan. “But then, what? If Republicans return to Washington’s business as usual, if we have no bigger plan than to be a speed bump on the road to America’s collapse, we don’t deserve to govern.”

But his plan isn’t gaining any traction so far with GOP leadership, at least not publicly. “If we’re fortunate enough to have the majority next year, I’ll be the majority leader; I’ll decide in consultation with my members what to put on the floor,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters Tuesday when asked about Scott’s plan. 

Most Republican senators interviewed by The Dispatch this week side with McConnell, saying in interviews that their conference should hold off on releasing an agenda and instead highlight areas where the Biden administration is falling short of voters’ expectations.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Jason Gibson

    I’m with Mitch.

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    Josh Blumenthal

    I don't at all agree with it, but I understand MM's point: run against something. And I read a comment that justifies it with the statement that you must win in order to govern. But why must we only contribute to society when we win enough power to try to force our own agenda? When out of power, why not work for incremental change, influencing proposed legislation (this is called compromise) rather than voting No and waiting for a chance to vote Yes to a package of your own ideas, to which a like-thinking member of the other party will be bound to vote No? IF we are interested in what is best for the US, why not work together to get the best possible outcome. HINT: They are not interested in what it best for the country. They are interested in power.

    Before anyone hollers, I deliberately wrote this without naming either party, because they both do the same thing. Out politicians are not patriots. (Apologies in advance to the very few exceptions.)

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      Dusty

      That was me who made the comment about winning being necessary to govern, and this is true when it comes to advancing the more ideological aspects of one's agenda.

      Because, the "Party of No" is a rather inaccurate talking point. In the past year Congress has either passed or is on the verge of passing laws that address domestic violence, semiconductor innovation/manufacturing, postal service funding/operations, and, lest we forget, the largest infrastructure bill in history. I'm probably leaving out a few items too.

      So, there's plenty of bipartisan agreement and compromise. It's just usually on the non-sexy, non-controversial types of issues that governments are supposed to take care of. It's generally the big, ideological stuff that people pay attention to, that bring out and drive the divisiveness, and that give parties opportunities to differentiate and, yes, run against bad ideas.

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        Josh Blumenthal

        Understood, but still not much of a reason to vote FOR someone. It might lead to None of the Above, meaning lower voter turnout. Also, giving some credit for what is accomplished, couldn't more get done? Maybe I can't win $10 today, but if I can get 5, or so, I'll still have 5 more than I did yesterday and I csn try for more tomorrow.

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          Josh Blumenthal

          I want to add this thought. In your scenario, not only would the politician not give me an affirmative reason to vote for him, but he would actually make me lose any respect for him and when you scale that up, for that party, which could be both parties, at which point I would have lost respect for the institution. Then, if I am swayed by the louder ideological voices (because the reasonable ones are not speaking to me at all), I might be convinced to lean to the extremes and where will that take us?

          If we can exchange ideas here in rational, respectful manner, why can't politicians do it? Despite my disagreements with some of what I read here, the tone of it leaves me thinking we could find a way to compromise and do what's best for the country -- which sometimes might be nothing, but that's okay too.

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            Dusty

            A few things.

            1) It's a bit of a motte and bailey to bemoan the fact that the parties never compromise, there's no bipartisanship, and there's no progress being made and then, when presented with list of bipartisan, compromised accomplishments, say, "Well yeah, but we can do more."

            2) I think this is the problem of arguing some things in the abstract, as sometimes it doesn't take into account real world context. There's no candidate running for any office whose sole position is to say "No" to everything that their opponent wants to do. If a Republican candidate comes out and says that he's against *insert big spending program here* he's probably coupling that with a message saying he's for fiscal responsibility, or smaller government, or both. Or vice versa with a Democrat coming out against his opponent's tax cut plan or something similar. Just because the party doesn't have a written-down agenda doesn't mean that it's not projecting its values and that individual candidates aren't talking about what they'd like to do. It can even allow the party to widen its tent a bit, as demonstrated by the fact that the governors of Alabama and Vermont are both Republicans - and neither would have a prayer of being elected in the other's state.

            3) And to your final point, I think this does eventually get at some of the fundamental world-view differences between conservatives and liberals. Liberals are, generally, more predisposed to want the government to be doing things and "making progress". Conservatives are generally more predisposed to be fine with the government doing nothing, and ideally even less (broad strokes, but you get my point).

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    rlritt

    I don't get it. GDP is the highest since1984. Unemployment is low and in some areas its only 3%. We have record high exports and wages have increased 4%, which is the highest in 20 years. Why is everyone complaining about the economy? And why is everyone surprised there is inflation?

    My friend in Minneapolis who works for a major financial company told me they are so short handed that vacations are canceled and for every new applicant there are 4 job offers at a salary higher than hers and she's been there 20 years. She says its like that everywhere. I'm retired and my inbox is filled with emails from headhunters promising signing bonuses. Yet all I read about is how since Biden, the economy is in the toilet.

    Do you all hate him that much? I can't think of which politician would have been remarkably better. And he's a million times better than the crook who he ran against.

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    Pat Riot

    Folks, this is a political party like we've never seen one on the USA before. The GOP now stands, explicitly, for absolutely nothing but winning power *for its own sake*.

    And no, it's not just about having no platform--although that itself is pretty shocking--it's about Republican lawmakers bragging about the benefits of Democrat's bills that they **voted against**.

    In other words, when it comes to actual governing policy, Republicans are happy to claim a draw with Democrats, and win on "culture issues" that have no discernible remedy from the Federal government.

    Republican voters, they seemed to have concluded, basically want the Democrat's policies but through actors who are fine rubbing shoulders with white supremacists and otherwise owning the libs.

    It's important, therefore, to wrap your head around this new stage of American politics. All of the old rules don't apply.

    For instance, Biden is not unpopular because of any of the policies he outlined in the SOTU. Those policies are mostly *very* popular with strong majorities of Americans, and they have been stopped in Congress by 40 GOP Senators who represent about 30% of Americans, and that has been done for *political* reasons (again, own the libs), not because they have some clearly articulated disagreement with the policy.

    Now, clearly Rick Scott didn't get the memo here, and he's making the mistake of believing his party's own BS--and Biden is unpopular because he keeps advocating popular new policy (when in fact he's unpopular for a lot of tribal reasons, and... that he hasn't *passed* those popular policies).

    Kellyanne Conway heralded a new phase of American politics: the post-truth era. The immediate implications of this new era is it's corollary: the post-policy GOP.


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      Patrick

      Biden is unpopular with the MAGA base because he’s a Democrat.

      But I believe Biden is unpopular with Dispatch conservatives because of his policy proposals. Combined with his insulting rhetoric when discussing said policy proposals.

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        Pat Riot

        Yes, and Dispatch conservatives are about 5% of the voting base, if that.

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      rlritt

      I know I don't get it. The older I get, the more I see that the politicians are a bunch of preening, self-centered talking heads who couldn't come up with governing plan to save their life.

      For example, textbook content is a huge "issue" for politicians. Textbooks are chosen by committees (with parent onput) by school districts, not politicians. They usually use the 3 major publishers who all pretty much the same and the Principals can pick from ones they like. And they change books maybe every 10 years! But for some reason that's a big issue for politicians to brag about. They don't even know what they're talking about. Like I've been saying: knuckleheads.

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    Earl King

    You have to stand for something otherwise you stand for nothing. I am of two minds however. Right now Biden has shovel and he keeps digging. Don’t hand a ladder down to the guy who digging. Several of the hard brained notions were ill conceived and poorly stated. As for my self yes I agree everyone should have some skin in the game...The goal of shoving more and more of the tax burden to fewer and fewer is poor judgement. There is only so much OPM.

    A national sales tax that would only go to reducing the deficit if he wants everybody to have skin in the game. Regressive? Maybe but we’ll have to do something. The most regressive item right now is inflation. Scott didn’t address it, there is a reason. There is not much anyone can do about it except the Fed...It will be recession, long and painful that will kill inflation. No Republican wants to admit that. So yeah, an agenda, but more broad like energy independence....inside an energy policy that includes carbon reduction....Yeah we can do two things at once....

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      Pat Riot

      I've been advocating an NST since the 1980s. But today's typical GOP voter is freaking out about paying 10% higher gas prices in the middle of a war and pandemic, so one can only imagine the reaction to an NST. Frankly this idea has a better chance with *Democrats* these days (although not much there either).

      Republicans don't want to lay down policy ideas like that because it means they need to defend them, which they are no longer equipped to do.

      Reading a few of the TD insiders like Johah Goldberg, he mentioned that the shift among Republican congress members to make their "coms" staff the head of the hierarchy as a *big deal*. This seems like inside baseball, but they pointed out--correctly I think--that this was a going to have a huge long term effect. The coms staff is managed based on their *engagement* metrics. The policy is now subservient to them, if they even have any power at all for the big things (of course as Biden pointed out in the SOTU, Congress pass *many* laws nobody ever heard of on a bi-partisan basis in the last year, which also shows this new disconnect).



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    Evan Donovan

    I agree with those who say that negative partisanship is why politics is so broken. McConnell operated in the Obama years just by resisting things so he would look like a failure; this is just more of the same.

    That being said, Rock Scott's plan is terrible. I'm not particularly conservative anymore, but I think even by conservative standards, it's bad. After all, when was the last time conservatives ran on a plan to *raise* taxes?

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      Evan Donovan

      "Rock" Scott, hehe, that should be his nickname now.

      Apologies for the typo - I think I was on a phone.

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    Dante Longfellow

    I do think that all Americans with income should pay income tax, even $10 a year at the bottom.

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    1. GregS

      Why?
      Why $10?
      Why not $0.10? Or $100?
      Is this indexed to some metric?
      What about businesses (or individuals) that have $0 tax liability because of paper losses carried over from past years?
      Should investment income still be taxed less than regular income?

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    Jen

    What an unforced error for Rick Scott. I don’t care how well he’s fundraising off of it. It clearly pissed off his Republican colleagues in the Senate who are getting asked about (and are being associated with) a document they had no involvement in. We can debate whether Republicans should be running on an agenda (it worked for them in 1994) but it shouldn’t be surprising that the strategy of the party out of power is to run against the party in power. Joe Biden didn’t win the White House because of Build Back Better. He won because he wasn’t Donald Trump. Democrats are incredibly unpopular right now so running simply as I’m not them is probably smart politically.

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      Pat Riot

      It's smart politically, but let us not forget that it's absolutely immoral and devastating to our country.

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    Dante Longfellow

    The whole point of populism is that you don't have any ideas other than "We like what we think most of you like."

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      Evan Donovan

      Not necessarily. William Jennings Bryan was a populist, but he had an actual platform.

      Also, given the existence of polling data, it's pretty easy to identify many things that have broad popularity with the public. Some of the ideas actually include police reform (along the lines of what David French has talked about - NOT defunding) & some, but not all, of what was in the Build Back Better Act.

      I think the biggest problem with Biden's administration has not been the broad strategy, but the tactics. Putting things in giant must-pass bills that can be effectively killed by 1-2 Democratic senators was a terrible move. If they had presented their agenda more piecemeal, they could've notched quick wins that would've been broadly popular with most people in the US, and they might've gotten enough Republican support for some of them to pass, even given the existence of the filibuster.

      For example, Romney would've supported something on the Child Tax Credit extension, probably (a good populist policy), and Romney, along with several other Republican senators, would've supported revising the Electoral Count Act to prevent a stunt like Trump wanted Biden to pull. But instead the Democrats went all in on a voting rights act that was doomed to fail from the beginning.

      So populism isn't bad in the sense of doing things that are broadly popular; the problems are when: 1) you attempt to pass them in a way that doesn't work given the structural dynamics of the Senate, especially (like the filibuster), 2) you structure them in a way that makes them a "poison pill" (like excluding faith-based groups from the Build Back Better child-care provisions).

      So why did the Democrats do things as they did? I don't think it's just that Biden is stupid or misread his mandate. Rather, I think he was trying to avoid criticism from his left flank (the Squad), by trying to get as many of their priorities passed as possible - quickly, before his chance to do it at all passed. But he just didn't have the votes for this, since moderate Democrats like Manchin and Sinema still exist. And now, it's backfired massively, since the Republicans are able to paint his administration as ineffectual and the Squad are blaming him more than they are the Republicans. (As seen by the counter to the SOTU given by Rashida Tlaib.)

      Meanwhile, the Republicans have no alternative to the Democrats that is actually broadly popular. The Rick Scott agenda is a loser even with most Republicans, the McConnell alternative is just negative partisanship, and the Trump/Carlson/Greene/Vance/et al. alternative is just culture-war social media posturing rather than actual policies.

      So, as others here have said, a pox on both their houses.
      ~

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    Johntadian

    Once again, the party of NO reinforces my wish of a pox on both their houses.

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      Clint

      Vote Libertarian!

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        Johntadian

        Dave Smith? He’s a comedian, so he’s got the Ukrainian optic.

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