Congressman Greg Steube (R-FL) said Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) would be a “great leader” for Senate Republicans, making the remarks during a discussion on Newsmax.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Wednesday announced his decision to step down from his leadership position, although he will not do so until November.
“But now it’s 2024. As Ecclesiastes tells us, to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven,” McConnell told his colleagues.
“One of life’s most under-appreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter. So I stand before you today, Mr. President and my colleagues, to say this will be my last term as Republican leader,” he announced.
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All eyes now go to the prospect of who will be the new leader. Steube believes Scott would be a “great leader of the Senate,” describing him as “certainly more conservative than what Mitch McConnell has been.”
Congress also needs to get “younger” members, Steube said, “to be leading these different chambers.”
Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., speaks during the Republican Study Committee press conference on the RSCs FY2022 budget proposal in the Rayburn House Office Building on Wednesday, May 19, 2021. (Photo by Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“The rank and file members that are getting elected — more than 65 percent of them in the House have gotten elected either when [former President Donald] Trump was president or since Trump has been president,” he said, identifying that as “the type of leadership that we need.”
“We need an America-first leadership and hopefully – when Trump is in the White House and we have America-first conservative leaders in our House and the Senate – we can move this country forward and out of the disastrous policy that [President] Joe Biden has put us in over the last three years,” he said.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) spoke to Breitbart News Daily on Thursday and also floated Scott as a solid contender for McConnell’s eventual replacement.
Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, speaks during a Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs and Rules and Administration Committees hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, March 3, 2021. The commander of the D.C. National Guard said it took more than three hours for senior military leaders to approve a request to send troops to the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riots, despite a “frantic” plea from the Capitol Police chief for immediate emergency assistance. (Greg Nash/The Hill/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“When we challenged McConnell, started this Congress, Rick Scott wanted to be a leader. And he stepped up the plate. He’d be a great leader. I mean, he’s led large organizations. He comes from the private sector. He’s certainly been leading the effort to have conservative House members work with conservative senators,” Johnson said.
“It’s why we got by the debt ceiling. So Rick showed himself to be pretty good leader, too. So again, we should go through that process,” he added.
McConnell’s eventual resignation from his leadership position follows months of his colleagues calling on him to do so following a series of health scares, which the 82 year old dismissed.
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