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If you come at the most ruthless political operator in recent history, you better not miss.
Rick Scott attempted to oust Mitch McConnell as the top Republican in the Senate following last year’s midterm elections. He failed, and now McConnell has yanked Scott from the influential Senate Commerce Committee. Scott is not happy.
“I represent the third-biggest state in the country,” the Florida senator griped to Fox News on Wednesday, adding that he felt McConnell booted him because he “ran against him.”
He continued to whine on Thursday. “I opposed him because I believe we have to have ideas, fight over ideas,” he told CNN. “He took Mike Lee and I off the committee. … I don’t think it made any sense. I’m responsible for the third biggest state in the country. I probably run the biggest company in my career of anybody’s in the Senate right now or before. So, I mean, I bring a lot to the table. But that’s a decision he made.”
Scott’s “ideas” are wildly unpopular, even in Republican circles. Last year, he released a “Plan to Rescue America” that included raising taxes, completing the border wall and naming it after Trump, and sunsetting all federal legislation in five years — including Medicare. He’s stood by his plan, although he insisted late last month that, of course, he doesn’t actually want to do anything to Medicare.
Excuse us if we’re not willing to take his word for it. McConnell certainly isn’t. “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years,” he said last year after Scott released his plan.
Scott wasn’t the only senator McConnell booted from the Commerce Committee. Mike Lee of Utah, who supported Scott’s bid to replace McConnell, was also removed from his role. He took it a little better than Scott did, though. “Mitch happens,” he tweeted Wednesday night.
