GOP senator withholds support for Thune as leadership showdown looms

FIRST ON FOX: A Senate Republican isn’t ready to support Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to stay as the top Republican as the GOP’s leadership elections fast approach.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., in an interview with Fox News Digital, argued that whoever would be the next to lead the Senate GOP and earn his vote in the process needed to lay out a plan on how Republicans would pass key agenda items heading into the lame-duck session of Congress before Senate Democrats take control in January.

Thune plans to run again for another term as the GOP leader, but Scott and a cohort of others want to delay Tuesday morning’s leadership elections to debrief after stunning losses across the board on Election Night. Whether he’ll support Thune for another term depends on his pitch.

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“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” Scott said. “I mean, I think the first step is what do we want to accomplish? And then anybody, including John Thune, if they want to be that, the first thing I have to say is, ‘Do they want to do that?’”

“If that’s not what they want to accomplish, then why would we elect them? But if that’s what they want to accomplish, then tell us why they’re the best at it,” he continued.

Senate Democrats flipped the upper chamber with wins in red states across the country, clinching a 54-seat majority that could grow even more depending on the outcomes of outstanding races in Mississippi and Alaska.

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That gives Republicans little time with a trifecta in government to ram through key remaining agenda items before Democrats officially take over.

Thune still plans on running for leader, too, despite the grumbling among Republicans. He said on Monday after lawmakers returned to Washington that he expected a “very engaged conversation” ahead of the leadership election.

“We’ll see where it goes from there, but, yeah, I’m running for leader, and I think it’s important that we have that discussion, and we will,” Thune said.

Scott said that he wants the candidates to be “specific” on how they can balance the budget and pass a slew of legislation, including a stock trading ban for lawmakers, permitting reform, the National Defense Authorization Act and the SAVE America Act.

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All of that, he said, would be a show that Republicans are listening to voters after getting pummeled in the midterms.

“Back home, they don’t care about anything other than do we make their lives better,” Scott said.

Thune is so far running unopposed for the top job — Scott reiterated that he had no interest in running again, trying twice for the gig, once against Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in 2022, and in 2024 when Senate Republicans were searching for McConnell’s replacement.

When asked if he would like to see someone else jump into the fray, Scott said, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that to anybody.”

Scott and Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Ted Budd, R-N.C., John Kennedy, R-La., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, all signed onto a letter demanding that Republicans meet before holding their leadership elections and delay voting until they have a full debrief on the midterm losses and what comes next.

They’re joined by Sens. Jim Banks, R-Ind., and Dave McCormick, R-Pa., who called for the elections to be delayed but did not sign onto the letter pushing leadership for a meeting.

When asked how long he’d like to see the leadership elections delayed, Scott said, “I think this first step is how long is it gonna take us to agree on what our path should be?”

“If we can get that done quickly, then we can, you know, have elections after that,” he said. “And then people that want to run with that agenda in mind, saying they believe in that agenda and will work hard to get that agenda accomplished, then that’s how we would decide how we vote.”