(RoyalPatriot.com )- Following a midterm election cycle that didn’t go as planned for the Republican Party as a whole, two senators in the party believe an audit should be conducted on the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which was led by Florida Senator Rick Scott.
Republican Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee both said they believed the committee should undergo a review by an independent person or firm. The aim of that review should be determining how the NRSC used its money and how that might have affected the fact that the GOP was unable to regain the majority in the upper chamber.
A spokesperson for the NRSC, Chris Hartline responded by telling Politico that the audit was wholly unnecessary. He said this is because the NRSC has to provide regular filings to the Federal Election Commission.
He explained:
“We get audited every month. It’s called an FEC report … Every member of the caucus was kept in the loop on NRSC strategy and spending all cycle.”
The latest FEC report showed that, as of October 19, the committee raised a total of $234.6 million for the midterm election cycle, and they spent $253.5 million total since the beginning of 2021 on this year’s elections.
Scott has been in the spotlight for some time now, both due to questions about how he’s run the NRSC and how the committee has spent money, and also because he launched a challenge to Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell for the top GOP leadership seat in the Senate.
Scott ultimately lost that election by secret ballot on Wednesday, when McConnell was re-elected to serve as the head of the Senate GOP conference once again.
In trying to make his pitch as to why he should lead the GOP in the Senate, Scott wrote to other Republican senators:
“I’m writing to you today because I believe it’s time for the Senate Republican Conference to be far more bold and resolute than we have been in the past. We must start saying what we are for, not just what we are against.
“I do not believe we can simply continue to say the Democrats are radical, which they are. Republican voters expect and deserve to know our plan to promote and advance conservative values.”
Calls for new leadership in the Senate GOP were backed by Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Ted Cruz of Texas, among others.
Over in the House, there was some contention for whether Kevin McCarthy, the current minority leader, should continue in his role as the head of the Republican Party as the GOP takes the majority next year.
Despite calls for new leadership in the House, McCarthy ended up winning re-election for the top position, though there were 31 Republicans who voted against him.
This means that even though there was a lot of noise about the current Republican leadership in the House, McConnell will remain Senate minority leader while McCarthy will become Speaker of the House when the new Congress convenes early next year.
