With razor-thin margins in both houses of Congress, Republicans don’t need to flip many seats this fall to regain a majority. Until this week, the Senate GOP under Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has purposefully lacked an agenda to offer voters before the midterms. But fear not: Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., has a plan — and Democrats are likely very glad that he does.
Specifically, Scott has an “An 11-Point Plan to Rescue America,” a 31-page prescription for “what Americans must do to save this country.” It draws echoes of Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America, the conservative lodestar that helped shape a generation of conservative politics. But Rick Scott, as this document makes clear, is no Newt Gingrich.
Scott heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which means he’s in charge of making sure Senate candidates are supported in their races. But he told Politico that that’s not what led him to develop his plan. “Hopefully, by doing this, we’ll have more of a conversation about what Republicans are going to get done,” Scott said. “There’s things that people would rather not talk about. I’m willing to say exactly what I’m going to do. I think it’s fair to the voter.”
To the surprise of nobody, the plan that Scott lays out is truly bonkers.
That’s exactly the last thing his caucus’s leader wants. McConnell would rather the midterms be focused on President Joe Biden. He’s been working to clear the midterm field of Senate candidates who he thinks won’t win general elections, even when that means working against former President Donald Trump. McConnell has also decided that keeping mum about any future agenda is the best way to leave Biden in the crosshairs and not alienate potential swing votes.
McConnell’s running a decent strategy given Biden’s polling numbers — but here comes Rick Scott to kick in the door and scream the GOP’s agenda from the mountaintops. And, to the surprise of nobody, the plan that Scott lays out is truly bonkers. If anything, it’s a gift to Democrats who no longer have to hint at what will happen should the Republicans reclaim power.
Republicans had been out of the majority in Congress for 40 years ahead of the midterms in 1994 when the Contract With America was introduced. Its eight points were all attached to legislative proposals that Republicans promised would be introduced within the first 100 days of the new Congress. It was a surprisingly short document, too, only three pages in total.
Many of their agenda items were controversial. Several of them touched on the “culture wars” that would come to dominate the GOP, while others were framed as being purely economic and targeted toward winning over swing voters. But they all carried some intellectual heft, having been developed in concert with the Heritage Foundation, the premier conservative think tank. And it worked, allowing Gingrich to become speaker of the House and setting the stage for the partisan clashes that defined politics in the 1990s.
There’s no appeal to moderates or independents or even conservative Democrats in his proposals.
Scott’s plan is, to put it bluntly, absolutely none of those things. There’s no appeal to moderates or independents or even conservative Democrats in his proposals. Instead, it’s loaded with the buzziest keywords you can hear on Fox News at any moment.
It takes aim at critical race theory and proposes a ban on the government asking Americans anything at all about their race or ethnicity, presumably including in the U.S. Census. It pledges to finish building “the wall” on the border with Mexico and name it after Trump. It says that the GOP will “starve Washington’s economy,” shrinking the federal workforce by 25 percent (cuts that assumedly wouldn’t touch the Pentagon) and in doing so “stop Socialism.” It accuses Democrats of working to destroy families and “replace them with government programs.” And, as MSNBC’s Steve Benen pointed out, it calls for tax increases on millions of Americans. If Scott hadn’t bragged about this document to Politico, one might assume it’s a Democratic false-flag operation. If I’m Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., who’s Scott’s counterpart for Senate Democrats this election cycle, I’m overjoyed that he has so clearly laid out his party’s plans. There’s no way this plan isn’t featured in dozens of Democrats’ campaign commercials. During the years since he left office, Gingrich has spiraled further and further into the lunatic fringe of the far-right. But while I disagree with every point in the Contract With America, at least it made sense. It was based on a common set of facts and not winks and jargon that act as a shibboleth for Trump-supporting patriots. NBC News reports that Gingrich is working with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who also plans on putting out a policy plan for the midterms. Given both McCarthy and Gingrich’s fealty to Trump, though, the result is almost sure to be on the same wavelength as Scott’s. Democrats would appreciate the gift.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
