McConnell hits bumps in majority

Nearly six months into his tenure as Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell is finding it’s not easy to keep his party’s presidential candidates in line.

Twice in the past month, GOP senators running for the White House have hijacked the Kentucky Republican’s floor schedule.

{mosads}Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) struck first, teaming with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) to force a vote on an amendment that would have killed legislation allowing Congress to review of a nuclear deal with Iran.

Then Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) prevented his colleagues from offering changes to a trade bill and helped cause the expiration of controversial provisions in the Patriot Act.

In both cases, the maneuvers forced McConnell to break his promise to allow an open amendment process in the Senate.

McConnell, who keeps his cards close to his chest, has so far refused to engage directly with his presidential nominees.

“You’re trying to get me to make a derogatory comment about members of the Senate. I’m not going to do that,” he told a reporter when asked whether he believes the country would be more or less safe with Paul in the White House.

“I admire and respect them all. We have different points of view on this important issue,” McConnell said of the 2016 candidates and the Patriot Act.

While McConnell is hardly the first Senate leader to face the challenge of corralling presidential hopefuls, the turmoil is drawing fire from Senate Democrats, who have seized on the Republican infighting to question the GOP’s ability to govern.

“Governing by brinkmanship, manufactured crisis, flirting with deadlines, a game of chicken,” Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said of the GOP majority. “You can call it whatever you want, but they’re doing it.”

Republicans have come to McConnell’s defense, accusing Democrats of preventing the chamber from operating smoothly. They have also suggested that the weeks-long fight over the Patriot Act was a byproduct of Senate rules, which give individual senators outsize sway over the pace of legislating.

“I don’t think this in any way shape or form is on Mitch McConnell’s shoulders,” Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said. “Mitch is the leader and has to live by the Senate rules.”

The procedural clashes have presented early challenges to McConnell’s authority as he settles in as Senate leader.

And he has a difficult task ahead as he seeks to move his conference toward legislative victories while balancing the demands of four presidential hopefuls — Rubio and Paul, as well as Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) — who are seeking to make their mark.

Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the Senate’s third-ranking Republican, said having four presidential contenders in the mix complicates the task for leadership.

“In the near term, yeah, running the Senate from an operational standpoint is going to be challenging,” he said. “You’ve got, on any given day, four people who, one, may not be here, or two, might be here in the way that Rand Paul was in the last week in terms of trying to keeping us from getting to a result.”

The stakes are high for McConnell, with his majority facing a tough electoral map in 2016.

With Republicans holding 54 seats and defending 24 of them in the next election, McConnell can’t afford to have his party divided on important votes.  

A number of fights coming up this summer and fall — including an increase in the debt ceiling and the renewal of the Export-Import Bank — will continue to test the GOP’s unity.

A June 30 deadline to renew the Export-Import Bank, which leadership predicts the Senate will miss, puts McConnell on a likely collision course with Graham.

McConnell promised to allow a vote on the bank in June, potentially as part of a larger package. But it’s unclear how or when that will happen, and Graham has warned that he will not back Republican leadership “until we get a vote on the Ex-Im Bank.”

Senators also have a fall deadline to raise the debt ceiling, a top issue for Cruz.

The Texas Republican has in the past tried to leverage the vote to get concessions from President Obama on the Affordable Care Act.

That tactic has attracted criticism from some of Cruz’s Republican colleagues, but his campaign touts his role in the debt ceiling fights, saying the Texan “set an early, high standard for meaningful Republican opposition to increasing the debt ceiling.”

And Rubio could once again grab the Senate’s spotlight, potentially causing headaches for McConnell, if a final deal on Iran’s nuclear program is sent to the Senate for review.

Though McConnell blocked Rubio from requiring that Iran recognize Israel in a nuclear deal, both the Florida Republican and Cruz have suggested they will keep the issue alive.

The two senators told Defense Secretary Ash Carter that they are concerned current negotiations “fail to recognize the inherent dangers of a nuclear Iran, particularly given the regime’s repeated genocidal threats against America and our close ally Israel.”

Still, Thune said he’s hopeful that the presence of Republican majority will be beneficial to the presidential candidates, even when members of the party disagree.

“I think in the end our candidates do better if we do better,” Thune said. “I’m hoping that will be the greater good that will emerge from all of this.”

Burr said he’s hopeful that candidates will be able to keep their campaigns separate from their work in Washington.

“Clearly the bright line of the past has become a little bit dimmer in the separation of campaigns and the U.S. Senate,” he said. “So I hope people will refrain from letting that line be broken.”