Recently, Senate Minority Leader and Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell made quite the power move when he removed Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott as well as Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee from the influential Commerce Committee. At first glance, it may just seem like some average house cleaning from the Republican lawmaker and leader of the GOP senate. However, many keen observers believe there’s a little more to it than that. Quite a lot more, actually.
According to more than a few observations and speculations over the ordeal, it certainly seems that Mitch McConnell’s power move may have been more so of a retaliation move after Senator Rick Scott attempted to oust the Senate Minority Leader, and Senator Lee threw his open support behind the effort, with the pair recently publicly confronting McConnell over Mitch’s stance on federal spending, as well as other key issues they had a problem with.
Back in November, McConnell served Scott a defeat on a silver platter with a 37 to 10 victory, positioning himself as the longest-serving Senate party leader in United States history.
Scott spoke with The Hill following McConnell’s recent move and confirmed the news, telling the publication, “McConnell got to pick. He kicked me off, he kicked Lee off.”
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The publication goes on to note that Scott “acknowledged running against McConnell is the likely reason he was booted from the panel despite his relative seniority on the committee and experience running a major company.”
The FL senator was quoted saying, “I probably ran the biggest company almost any senator in the history country has ever run. I was governor of the third-biggest economy in the United States, Florida. I’ve got a business background.”
According to The Hill, a source close to Scott said the FL Republican, who spearheaded the GOP’s effort to retake the Senate last year, was “furious.”
But to make matters that much more interesting, it seems McConnell didn’t just flaunt his power over the pair of GOP lawmakers, he had so little respect for them that he did so is a way that left Scott finding out about it all through a text message.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
