Get awkward

How Rubio's Senate return could get awkward

He would join a crowd of young Republicans with big ambitions — perhaps even the White House.

By Burgess Everett

By all rights, fellow Senate Republicans should be excited that Marco Rubio wants to remain a senator — and help them keep their majority.

But minutes after Rubio went public with his reelection bid, Ted Cruz had nothing to say about his former presidential rival. “Just call my press office,” Cruz said as a press aide walked behind him. Pressed again, the aide firmly said: “He’s not gonna talk about it.”

Rubio’s already favored to keep the seat he once promised to vacate. But his electoral decision also makes it much more likely that the Senate Republican Conference will be even more crowded with a full stable of striving pols like Cruz and Rubio all committed to reshaping the GOP after Donald Trump’s presidential run.

“It’s good to have a bunch of ambitious, rambunctious youngsters like us,” said Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, a popular lawmaker also on an upward trajectory.

Of course, it can also mean clashes between competing egos and ideological agendas. Or in Scott’s diplomatic words: “It just means we’ll have more interesting family conversations.”

Provided Rubio and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky win reelection in races in which they are favored, they will rejoin a conference filled with relatively young senators who will be the focus of endless speculation about their future over the next four years. There’s mild-mannered conservative Scott, hawkish veteran Tom Cotton of Arkansas, never-Trump leader Ben Sasse of Nebraska, low-key Joni Ernst of Iowa, energetic Cory Gardner of Colorado and Cruz, who later issued a statement supporting Rubio.

Republicans insist it’s a good problem to have: Big names translate to lots of attention on the Senate and its rising stars. But it can get messy, too: The Senate offers the perfect platform for ideological grandstanding and a single senator can shut the chamber down in an instant.

“I still remember what Sen. McConnell told me when I got here: ‘Welcome to the United States Senate, 100 significant egos and 200 sharp elbows.’ So it’s nothing new,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas. “We have a lot of people not running for office who exert their rights as a senator and can make things more challenging.”

Still, Cornyn acknowledged the number of GOP senators looking for the spotlight is likely only to increase ahead of the next presidential election, compared to this year, when four GOP senators ran for president. In particular, Cruz, Rubio and Paul were supposed to form the core of a GOP presidential field that ultimately could not compete with Trump.

“It’s going to be déjà vu all over again isn’t it?” said Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee (R-Tenn.). “I’d rather be talking about all the talent on our side than the lack thereof.”

Increasingly, the Senate serves as a launchpad for presidential contenders: Rubio and Cruz were the last two Republicans in the race that had any hope of beating Trump. And as they prepared to pursue the GOP nomination, Cruz, Paul, Rubio and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) each used their status as powerful members of Congress to establish a national political profile, whether through compromise or conflict.

Cruz famously used a filibuster to stoke a government shutdown in 2013, which boosted his profile but drove deep cracks in the GOP, and Paul single-handedly provoked a 2015 shutdown of some of the national’s surveillance programs. Later on the campaign trail, Cruz, Rubio and Paul spent months attacking one another in often blunt terms, forcing other Republican senators to choose sides or stay silent.

Those wounds may not be fully healed. And neither Cruz, nor Paul was feeling particularly loquacious on the topic of Rubio on Wednesday.

“I wish him the best of luck,” Paul said. Asked how his relationship with Rubio is these days, he replied: “I don’t really want to do anymore interview than that.”

Whether the Senate’s biggest names can all pull together — and perhaps aid one another — over the next four months will have a significant impact on their future aspirations: If Republicans lose the majority, it will hurt their ability to set the agenda and use chairmanships to drive their message. Rubio and Cruz, for example, have used subcommittee chairmanships to take out their frustrations on President Barack Obama and highlight issues important to them. And Rubio in particular blamed four years of serving in the Democratic majority for souring his view of the Senate.

Senate GOP leaders are taking things one step at a time: Their biggest goal at this point is simply to hold onto the majority and deal with the fallout from a crowded caucus later. And Rubio moved the GOP ever closer to that goal by changing the dynamic of a Senate race that was getting away from Republicans.

“I’m pretty excited about it,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “It shouldn’t be surprising to anybody we didn’t want to lose him and the clearest way to keep the seat was trying to convince him to run again.”

But some senators are beginning to think about what the party might look like after Trump’s completed his run for president and the election is over. The Republican majorities in the House and Senate have made initial progress clearing some deadlines from the calendar, but haven’t touched contentious issues like immigration reform or a criminal justice overhaul. And there’s a government shutdown threat to deal with this fall that could hang over into next year, when the debt ceiling will again need to be raised.

With a new president, Congress is likely to be invigorated by big ideas rather than the narrow priorities that McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan have been able to work on with Obama. And that’s where clashes among the GOP’s best-known senators are most likely to manifest themselves.

Rubio took the plunge into immigration reform in 2013, a move that may have hindered his presidential run among conservatives but could be beneficial to his standing in Florida. His pursuit of normalization for undocumented immigrants runs counter to staunch conservatives like Cruz and Cotton, while newer members like Gardner and Ernst have never confronted the matter. Congress hasn’t engaged in a debate about authorizing war either — a major litmus test for those seeking the job of commander in chief.

Deferred action on big-ticket policy items means that 2017 will be a major opportunity for the GOP to begin rethinking itself — particularly if it suffers a debilitating loss this year.

To take over the party post-Trump, Graham advised the next generation of national candidates to think about growing the tent and competing with Democrats directly for young and minority voters. That means confronting immigration reform and climate change rather than opposing Democratic efforts to address those issues.

“You’ve got to prove to people that you’re bigger than your party and that you’re a person of accomplishment,” Graham said. “The more on your résumé that you did things that are hard that mattered, the better off you’re going to be. If your résumé is: I’m the chief guy who says ‘no?’ That’s not going to take you to the general election.”