Several Senate Republicans Want Term Limits for Their Future Leaders
They don’t want another McConnell.
Several Senate Republicans confirmed to The Daily Caller that they want term limits for their future chamber leaders.
How about politicians have term and age limits?
Current Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell steps down from the position in November. He’s 82, only a year older than President Joe Biden.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, and Florida Sen. Rick Scott announced their candidacy for the next leader.
Cornyn is 72. Thune is 63. Scott is 71.
Not exactly spring chickens, you know?
Cornyn and Scott support term limits:
Cornyn has stated: “One reason I am running to be the next Republican Leader is because I believe the Senate needs more engagement from all of my colleagues, and that includes the opportunity for any Member to serve in Leadership. I will support a conference vote to change the rules and institute term limits for the Republican Leader.”
Scott told told the Caller that Washington is currently “built on backroom deals and bad politicians getting comfortable, complacent and forgetting that they represent the people that elected them, not DC special interests.”
“Republicans all across America support term limits because it’s common sense and desperately needed,” he continued. “We have a broken system and we need a dramatic sea change and someone with a turn-around background to fix it. I’ve spent my life shaking things up. We need that in Washington right now and it’s why I’m running to be Republican leader.”
Thune previously told Politico he’s “open to discussing term limits on the next Republican leader, with a critical caveat that the topic needs to be part of a broader conversation within the Senate GOP.”
Utah Sen. Mike Lee, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis all support leadership term limits.
McConnell has served as Senate Republican leader since 2007. He’s been in the Senate since 1984.
Again, term and age limits, please.
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Comments
The parties should choose a leader every session, at least
Technically speaking, they do. The problem is there’s a lot of power in seniority and a long-term leader knows where all the bodies are buried. And, being politicians, nobody wants to piss of the guy who knows that.
Incumbency generally= reelection in perpetuity. A second term Senator absent a shift of the electorate or prevailing political make up is a safe bet for a third term if they don’t eff up spectacularly.
That allows them to take in all sorts of donations which they don’t need for their own re-election. Which they then use to support incumbent Senators in less safe seats or to pick a candidate in a primary for a challenge to the d/prog or for an open seat.
That builds favors and influence for the Senator. It lets them build a flock of Senators with a degree of personal loyalty. Which is how McConnell has maintained his power, by hand selecting to a large degree for going on two decades which candidates get elected to the Senate.
Exactly. Look no further than his support for that absolute worm Murkowski, who LOST HER PRIMARY and then McConnell helped fund her ‘write-in’ campaign, or more recently, where he ignored winnable races to spend tens of millions of dollars helping her defeat another conservative. Why? Because she votes how he wants.
Reading the comments of the politicians, one would think that the position of GOP leader in the Senate is a hereditary position.
How about term limits for all congresscritters? That would solve the problem – and a bunch of others.
Technically we have term limits…but as a population, we’re as bad as the politicians and we keep re-electing them over and over again.
Incumbency provides a nearly insurmountable barrier to challengers, especially for most of our CD that are designed to produce a ‘win’ for one party with only a handful of CD that are truly competitive in a general election.
This is true. It’s also true that an electorate could yank the reins hard and get a more constitutionally-minded government. But that would require a constitutionally-minded electorate.
Or an electorate who paid attention to what the Incumbent does/fails to.do and not the excuses they make about why they failed to deliver what they promised to do during the last campaign or new promises in the current campaign.
Bottom line is voters do have the ability to throw the bums out IF enough of cared enough to put in the hard work to do so. Pogo was correct ‘we have met the enemy and he is us’.
We have term limits. It’s called “staying in office till you die.” Going into a coma is an indication your term is approaching its limit. Since 1968 the following senators stayed in office until they croaked:
Kennedy, Robert F.
Bartlett, Bob
Dirksen, Everett M.
Russell, Richard B., Jr.
Prouty, Winston L.
Ellender, Allen J.
Hart, Philip A.
McClellan, John L.
Metcalf, Lee W.
Humphrey, Hubert H., Jr.
Allen, James B.
Jackson, Scoop
East, John P.
Zorinsky, Edward
Matsunaga, Spark M.
Heinz, H. John, III
Burdick, Quentin N.
Chafee, John H.
Coverdell, Paul
Wellstone, Paul D.
Thomas, Craig L.
Kennedy, Edward M.
Byrd, Robert C.
Inouye, Daniel K.
Lautenberg, Frank R.
McCain, John S.
Feinstein, Dianne
^^^^^THIS^^^^^
Kennedy, Robert F. D
Bartlett, Bob D
Dirksen, Everett R
Russell, Richard B., Jr. D
Prouty, Winston L. R
Ellender, Allen J. D
Hart, Philip A. D
McClellan, John L. D
Metcalf, Lee W. D
Humphrey, Hubert H., Jr. D
Allen, James B. D
Jackson, Scoop D
East, John P. R
Zorinsky, Edward D
Matsunaga, Spark M. D
Heinz, H. John, III R
Burdick, Quentin N. D
Chafee, John H. R
Coverdell, Paul R
Wellstone, Paul D. D
Thomas, Craig L. R
Kennedy, Edward M. D
Byrd, Robert C. D
Inouye, Daniel K. D
Lautenberg, Frank R. D
McCain, John S. R
Anyone else seeing a trend?
In RFK’s case it was sudden onset lead poisoning..
I think Heinz was killed in a plane crash.
While I technically agree with you, “”we” don’t keep reelecting them as population, their constituents in their districts keep reelecting them. I have no more control over who the Senators from California or Nebraska are than I do over the price of tea in Bangkok Thailand.
Term limits need to be built into an amendment to the Constitution.
But if that happens, the control then goes into the hands of Congressional staffers and bureaucrats. These leeches live in the darkness, move between various elected members of Congress, and work to add their pet projects to bills without their employers even knowing about it.
These are the people we need to control. Or simply remove the power that Congress has over our everyday lives.
Or simply remove the power that Congress has over our everyday lives.
Yes. Reduce the gov’t to its Constitutional limits and a lot of the crap that accretes to those positions goes away. Same with the executive – reduce the power and control and the bureaucracy gets to a level you can actually deal with it.
Congress has delegated so much of its power to the executive branch bureaucracy, that very little of their own time is spent actually doing anything but holding useless hearings and fundraising for their next election. They can’t even bother to do their basic function of budgeting and financing the government.
Hopefully the SCOTUS will blow up Chevron doctrine this term and much of the excess rile making goes away. Better by far to require Congress exercise its power instead of delegation to the Executive branch, IMO unconstitutional as ‘All legislative power shall be vested in a Congress consisting of HoR/Senate…’ though I am fully aware my opinion is in the minority.
By requiring the Congress itself to perform all the lawmaking and adopt/pass regulations itself there would be far less ability to generate thousands of pages of new Federal regulations each year. The legislative colander simply doesn’t allow for that volume nor would the current crop of Politicians appreciate rolling up their sleeves and putting their name to passage of controversial new regulations. The current system allows Congress to delegate to Execute branch then wring their hands and blame the bureaucracy instead of taking accountability. Very convenient system for ever expansive gov’t.
^^^^THIS^^^^.
which is what the pols say when
term limits are brought up.
Term limits are useless until the unconstitutional regulatory bureaucracies are stripped of their lawmaking powers. They are the cancer on self-government by the people.
But, term limits might encourage congresscritters to do something about that.
Term limits will not solve the problem – which is a Senate GOP of cowards and dipsh*ts. McConnell should have been thrown out of leadership after his first betrayal or failure .. or even after his fifth of either. The Senate GOP are a bunch of cowards who refused to do the right thing. Term limits doesn’t solve that; it just papers over it. Cowardice is cowardice.
Term limits break the power structure as it is currently built. That’s not nothing.
And the real problem with some of the cowardice is that you can’t count on any of your compatriots to do the right thing.
Term limits for leadership does nothing to change the character of the leadership. Instead of McConnell for 78 years we would have had McConnell for a decade and then Thune for a decade and then Cornyn for a decade … and they are all worms who would prefer to do deals with Barky and the America-hating left than support the Tea Party that gave them power. House leadership has changed a lot and we have still had nothing but cowards as GOP Speakers who were doing the dems’ bidding more than anything, even up to today and Johnson.
Term limits for leadership don’t change character and that is the problem we have been having with GOP leadership in the House and Senate for some time, now.
“breaks the power structure”
no it does not
it just changes the faces
the power structure only gets broken when a DIFFERENT PHILOSOPHY /AGENDA ( djt) comes into play
WHICH IS WHY THEY HATED ( one reason at least) TRUMP
Term limits break the seniority structure. At a minimum in the Senate (which the article is about), where 2 terms would not be much time to build a dynasty. A new face with some attitude and a focus could shift things without nearly as much resistance from “senior” leadership.
a “new face” does NOT mean a new or better philosophy
how about we return the senate to the states an not the citizens of that states …
glad to see someone else gets it!!!!!
Cornyn and Thune are worms. Term limits wouldn’t change that.
exactly
Exactly, any worm that term limits are aimed at will amass re election cash and use it to twist arms to stay in office
The whole debate is a side show. Focus on the right fight
Select someone who will fight to reduce the power of democrats and the federal government by any means necessary and work to arm our side against the foes of liberty
I’m amused that people think the term “Republican” is meaningful in this day and age. when referring to Senators and Reps.
Its not cowardice that shapes their actions, its collusion.
Term limits have done no good at all in California. True-hearted conservatives who are sane, steadfast, hard-working and effective are scarcer than hen’s teeth. Meanwhile, on the Dem/Uniparty side, there is an endless stream of apparatchiks ready to fill the vacancies and vote the party line. I get the frustration with corrupt barnacle-encrusted lifers, but term limits is just a too-clever technical fix to a deeply rooted problem, namely the size and power of government.
I want term limits on any government work.
You can work for the government for at most six years in any capacity at any level, cumulative, then you are permanantly barred from holding any office, local, state, or federal, or working for the bureaucracy at any level, or lobbying.
I’d pick a shorter time, but that’s the length of a senate term.
The problem of Federal Judges still needs to be sorted out in that plan, however.
I would make it longer. Allow for movement from house to house. But 12-16 years TOTAL, with no more than two terms in any position. I’m not sure civil service limits would do much good. It’s the power of the office (the one the bureaucrat sits in) more than any person’s seniority in that case.
How about up or out rules as the Military has coupled with shorter length of assignment? So no more than three years in a particular role/job then they either advance to the next career rung or get transferred for one additional three year assignment in grade as the final opportunity for advancement or elimination? No more promotions based on longevity only merit and performance based.
That’s an interesting proposal. I do see it having the same problems it has in the military – a lot of people who do good work but aren’t the “promotable” sort get shuffled off. If it helped to reduce the size of the bureaucracy, long term, then it would be a net positive, for sure.
And it works to counter turf building fiefdoms by career bureaucrats. Yeah we would potentially lose quality people who didn’t make the cut for promotion but the automatic transfer provision would put them into a new location/assignment where they had another chance to advance. Lets face it the bottom and middle of the federal employee pyramid is pretty wide so it would really only clip the dregs until they neared the apex and the number of positions narrows to be truly competitive.
I am sure the 100% competent and absolutely stellar federal employees who are graciously choosing govt service v a private sector career path where they would all obviously rise to SR positions of CFO, COO, CEO due to their inherent competence, diligence, attention to detail, can do spirit, and who are doing us all favor by their govt service would be on board with a proposal that objectively demonstrates all their union claims federal employee greatness! (S)
wrong as usual
the age doesnt matter
their agenda does
as usual the lefty controls the narrative
only when it was impossible to ignore fjbs bad policies/antics
did the msmdnc start on about age
B/C IT WAS ANOTHER WAY TO GET AT TRUMP
oh look trump is that age group
he cant run
THIS IS THE DREAM OF THE OBAMA LED ACA EZIKEL EMANUEL
where he was stating you dont need to even live after 75
b/c they alreay collected alll your ss money and want to make sure they pay it to their “offspring” in the poc community etc etc
I don’t think a lot of people realize that the incessant reference to ‘age’ is a lefty thing.
Old people remember better days and better ways. Gotta get rid of them and their memory in order to create a new leftist humanity.
It’s like they’ve never heard of Pol Pot and the killing fields.
Because they haven’t. Deliberately.
It’s like the blanket condemnation of ‘corporations’.
The left wants you to hate voluntary associations (what a corporation is) in favor of enforced associations (what a government is) –so they focus on the excesses of industries THEY control as examples of why corporations are bad.
It never ceases to make me laugh when the ‘corporate media’ derides the ‘corporate press’.
The silent generation and boomers are currently in control of the levers of govt power and corporate power and have been for decades. While there are some Gen X who are finally reaching a few prominent positions and a smattering of Millennials here and there in elected office or C suite it has been older folks by and large running the Nation into the ground or create the conditions for a managed decline.
Age matters b/c folks lose physical ability and stamina as they age then their cognitive ability declines. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t respect the experience of our elders and their words of wisdom (but not their words of folly). Older folks are very useful to have around to tell the damn unvarnished and often painful truths that younger folks are too squeamish or too PC to utter. We should not discard folks automatically b/c they reach X age but they shouldn’t venerated as fonts of wisdom based upon age alone.
Isn’t it weird how all through history we’ve had old wise men, elder statemen. Why, being old is actually built into the name ‘senate’.
And then along comes a bunch of know nothing youths (and they come along EVERY SINGLE GENERATION) to tell everyone how old people are incompetent at leading.
But it got insidious with the advent of communism.
Because communism doesn’t work if there a different system that does better–and compared to communism ALL systems are better.
So they need the memory of better times and different ways erased. Eradicated. Destroyed.
And they infest our education, media, and academia– which is why you repeat what you’ve been indoctrinated to think.
And it really takes root because each generation thinks the generation of old people ahead of them should just get out of the way anyway.
And the people doing this are the silent and boomer generation useful idiots who have been destroying OUR minds since they were able.
age and its discriminatory actions are that OF A LEFTY
no matter who does it even a so called pro american
the act itself is to put the government over the people>>>THAT IS the Lefts agenda
agree
Ancient Rome had an extreme version of term limits in place.
The result was vastly *more* corruption, not less.
Trump PROVED ITS NOT TERM LIMITS that changes the game
its the philosophy
they all come in with their
we work for allllll americans etc and then fail to stick to a pro american agenda
TRUMP????
STUCK TO IT
ON RECORD AS calling out our “friends” in NATO to start paying closer to what they havent paid to us forever so they can have their “FREE” healthcare etc
7 nations that would have NEVER SIGNED AN AGREEMENT WITH ISRAEL
as PEACE BROKE OUT AROUND THE WORLD ( generally speaking)
^^^^trump^^^^
and on and on it went
He did upset the business usual DC apple cart and in many ways altered the trajectory of the Nation for the better, but he did not deliver on his central 2016 campaign promise to ‘build a big beautiful wall’.
That statement of fact is not an assault or hit against Trump but pointing it out always seems to trigger folks. DJT decided to become a politician. Every politician, including DJT, has over promised and under delivered. Some by intention, some by change in circumstances, some b/c they found they didn’t want to expend the political capital to achieve one promise that may have derailed their ability to deliver on other campaign promises.
IMO, DJT falls into the latter category re the inability to force Congress to fund the wall. He could have used a Veto until he got it BUT that would have been very contentious, possibly creating a genuine split of the GoP and likely prevented all the other good things he was able to accomplish in office.
How about limiting Republican leaders to Republicans who will work to advance Republican voters’ priorities instead of Democrat ones?
Or, you know, morons, maybe you could take the incredibly radical step of NOT CONTINUING TO ELECT THEM LEADER.
Or do away with senators entirely and reform the senate to consist of the state governors, who send liaisons to DC to conduct business on their behalf. They have no political clout of their own and can be removed and replaced at the pleasure of their governors.
State senates would be liaisons of the county commissioners.
With modern communications, we no longer need the representatives-writ-large who are our current senators.
I am now praying for SMOD to deal with the situation.
ted kennedy was “term limited” out
and MA has gone even further left
Then they should have the fortitude to vote him out rather than hamstring themselves with term limits.
With apologies to Madison, and his famous line from Federalist 51(*): No mechanical rule will rein them in if the people lack the will. If the people have the will, any rule will do.
We have met the enemy, and he is us. — Pogo (Still not wrong.)
(*)“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”
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