Sen. Thom Tillis (RN.C.), an adviser to the Senate Republican leadership team, distributed a letter to colleagues who reject conservative lawmakers who want to reform GOP conference rules to take power away from the Republican leader.
Senate conservatives led by Senators Mike Lee (Utah), Ron Johnson (Wis.), Rick Scott (Florida) and Ted Cruz (Texas) want to reform GOP conference rules to shift power away from the leader, hoping to take advantage of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) decision to step down from leadership at the end of the year.
One of his key reforms is to limit the next leader to six years in office, something McConnell says would be a bad idea.
Senate Republican leader John Thune (S.D.), who is running to succeed McConnell, has not yet endorsed a term limit for the next leader, but two of his rivals for the top job — Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) ) and Scott – are supporting the idea.
Tillis, the former speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives who arrived in the Senate in 2016, is now rejecting calls to limit the power of the next leader.
He wrote in his letter to colleagues that it is “very important that we consider proposals to strengthen rather than weaken the position of the leader of the Republican conference.”
And Tillis, a former management consultant, suggested that Republicans take a look at the rules of the Senate Democratic conference for some ideas on how to increase party unity if they want to move toward that goal.
He noted that after a bipartisan bill to address gun violence passed the Senate in 2022, some Republican colleagues complained that “Democrats would never do this” because “they stick together.”
“If the objective is to further improve this type of discipline among us, then weakening the leader would be counterproductive. So as we consider these things, keep in mind the purpose and consequences of the changes,” she advised.
He pointed out that the Senate Democratic conference, which generally acts more in lockstep with its leader than the Senate GOP conference, “has no treatment for term limits.”
And he noted that none of the four party conferences in the Senate and House currently limit the term of office of their top leader.
He reminded colleagues that when the Senate GOP conference voted on term limits for its top leader in 1995 and 2008, it rejected the idea both times.
“Having term limits for the leader can make the political side of the job more difficult,” he warned. “I’m in the camp of not needing term limits because we can choose a leader every two years, and I’m not convinced that office alone provides much advantage in a leadership election.”
McConnell, who became Senate Republican leader in 2007, has only faced a leadership challenge once during his more than 17 years in the top job. This happened after the 2022 midterm elections, when Scott ran against him but lost by 36 votes to 10.
Tillis also argued that if other Republican senators are calling to impose term limits on the Senate Republican leader, then they should also consider more restrictive term limits for committee chairs and ranking members.
He notes in his letter that senators with decades of seniority on multiple committees, like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), can jump to serving as chairman or ranking member of multiple committees once they reach the term limit for a given term. panel.
Grassley, for example, who is 90, chaired the Senate Finance Committee for years before moving on to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, and now serves as the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.
“If we move forward with term limits for our leader, then I think we need to rethink all of our term limits for both elected leadership positions and committee chairs,” he wrote.
“Some will say that committee chairs already have term limits, but I don’t agree. Once you become president, it is simply a question of which committee you will chair and not whether you will be president in the future,” he argued.
He noted that Grassley has been chair or ranking member of a committee for nearly 30 years — or “six years longer than Mitch has been leader.”
Tillis highlighted to Republican colleagues that the Democratic leader in the Senate has more power than his Republican counterpart in several areas.
For example, the Republican leader has the authority to choose one-half plus one of any open committee seats, while the Democratic leader has the power to fill all open committee seats.
“Expand the leader’s authority to be aligned [with] the Democratic leader could empower the leader to position members on the committees most likely to advance the agenda of the conference majority,” he suggested.
Tillis also reminded his Senate Republican colleagues that, unlike the Senate Republican Conference, the Democratic leader serves as the conference chair and presides over all conference meetings and lunches.
“Everyone except the leader has a time limit of 3 minutes or less to speak,” he said of Democrats. “We could consider having a similar model or, at the very least, adopting the time limits and reorienting the lunches so that the leader sets the agenda and delegates to whip, the conference leader and others to chair.”
This proposal seemed aimed at Lee and Johnson in particular. Lee presides over the weekly Senate Republican luncheon as chairman of the Steering Committee. And Johnson is known for speaking at length during lunches.
Tillis noted that the Senate Democratic leader nominates the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, a selection then ratified by the rest of the Democratic conference, while Senate GOP conference rules now leave it up to individual senators to run to become the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).
“Having the leader nominate the NRSC chair, subject to conference ratification, could increase the likelihood that the NRSC chair is aligned with the Republican leader’s priorities and reduce the risk of conflicts in messaging and priorities,” he wrote. That reform appears aimed at Scott, who clashed with McConnell over messaging and fundraising strategy when he served as chairman of the Republican Senate campaign arm in the 2022 midterm elections.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
