Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) enters the 2024 election cycle in command of his conference but with lingering discontent threatening to complicate negotiations with Democrats.
McConnell was comfortably reelected as the No. 1 Senate Republican last month, overcoming the first challenge to his leadership in 15 years amid infighting over the party's disappointing performance in the midterm elections. Most Senate Republicans are backing McConnell despite the surrender of a Pennsylvania seat to the Democrats and failure to recapture the majority.
However, McConnell does not have a free hand to cut deals and avoid confrontation with the White House and Senate Democrats that Republicans granted him in the past, including after past electoral disappointments. Republican insiders are predicting McConnell will have to pick more fights with the opposition on thorny areas than he might prefer, possibly on government funding and raising the debt ceiling, to keep sparks of discontent in his conference from turning into a conflagration.
Besides Johnson, Republicans itching for change inside the conference include Sens. Rand Paul , Mike Braun , Mike Lee , Ted Cruz , Lindsey Graham , and Rick Scott , the outgoing National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman who challenged McConnell for the conference’s top leadership post. These half-dozen senators have dubbed their working group the “breakfast club.” They have so far been unclear about what they want from McConnell beyond more resistance to Biden and Senate Democrats.
Until Election Day, Republicans were predicting a red wave would sweep them to victory in the House and Senate, declaring voters were poised to rebuke Biden over dissatisfaction with skyrocketing inflation and rising crime. Scott projected GOP Senate pickups of up to five seats. Instead, the party lost gubernatorial contests, flipped barely enough seats to win the House majority, and lost ground in a 50-50 Senate Democrats control via Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote.
Those deals included GOP support for infrastructure spending and legislation to facilitate the construction of semiconductor manufacturing plants. McConnell also declined to block Democrats from raising the debt ceiling, all in a bid to ensure centrists like Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema would not vote to gut the 60-vote threshold needed for passing most legislation. With Republicans set to take over the House, that concern is now moot.
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