The race to become next Senate Republican leader is heating up as GOP senators are divided over how to counter Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) messaging offensive on women’s reproductive rights, a top issue in the 2024 election.
The debate over floor strategy has become an opportunity for the GOP senators running to replace Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) to showcase their leadership and strategic skills within the Republican conference.
Senate Republicans face a tough decision next week, when Schumer will force them to vote on a bill to protect access to in vitro fertilization that has been written in a way that few if any GOP lawmakers could support without significant changes.
Schumer is bringing the bill to the floor even though he knows Republicans oppose it so that Democrats can portray Republicans as extreme on women’s health issues and to highlight the ramifications of the Supreme Court overturning the national right to abortion in 2022.
He used the same tactic earlier this week when he forced a vote on advancing the Right to Contraception Act. That bill is sponsored by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Republicans said it’s full of poison-pill provisions.
It failed 51 to 39 with only two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voting with Democrats to allow the bill to move forward.
Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), who is viewed as the early frontrunner to become next leader, has argued to colleagues that Republicans should block the Democratic bills from even coming up for debate on the floor.
He says that voting to begin debates on these bills still wouldn’t guarantee Senate Republicans a chance to amend them. He argues that doing so would only drag out the process and allow Democrats to inflict maximum political damage, according to GOP senators.
“These are show votes. We’ve seen show votes before and historically the practice on show votes is to vote against show votes and to call t hem what they are,” said a Senate Republican aide familiar with the internal debate. “The history on show votes is to call them what they are, point out that they are political votes that are not designed to become law.”
Thune is expected to argue again next week that Senate Republicans should block a motion to proceed to a debate on the Democrats’ IVF legislation.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who is also running for McConnell’s job, however, is criticizing the Senate GOP leadership for not putting together a plan to give Republican senators the option of voting to begin floor debate armed with a clearly defined strategy to counter message.
“We know [Schumer] is going to have these show votes. We know he’s going to do contraception, we know he’s going to do IVF. What I think’s important is we all get on page on what our message is,” Scott told The Hill in an interview Thursday.
“It’s important not just to say they’re wrong, we should say what are we for. So you can do it in a variety of ways. You can do bills, you can do amendments, you can do resolutions, you can do statements, you can do all these things,” he said. “We ought to get get out in front of it and do it in a unified manner, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
Scott has introduced a resolution expressing support for Americans starting families through in vitro fertilization.
It encourages clinical research to improve outcomes for parents seeking to overcome infertility and supports state legislative and regulatory actions to establish safety and ethical standards for medical facilities offering IVF treatments.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a third candidate in the race to succeed McConnell, is urging his colleagues to stick together and vote as a group, whatever path they decide to take. His comments have been interpreted by some GOP senators as siding with colleagues who want to engage in a floor debate over women’s reproductive rights and attempt to amend the Democratic bills.
At a Senate Republican lunch meeting Tuesday, Collins, a prominent Republican moderate urged colleagues to vote to begin debate on the Right to Contraception Act, arguing it would give Republicans a chance to offer their own amendments and portray the Democratic bill as extreme, according to senators familiar with the meeting.
