Opinion Thune and Senate traditions beat Musk, Carlson and the MAGA-verse. (Jim Garaghty, WaPo)

Florida's rather jejune and juvenile Junior United States Senator, RICHARD LYNN SCOTT, lost. He came in last, with fifteen (15) votes, and was eliminated.  From The Washington Post:

Opinion 

 Thune and Senate traditions beat Musk, Carlson and the MAGA-verse

John Thune’s victory as GOP Senate majority leader shows not all of Washington is Trump-ified. 

3 min

Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota) on Capitol Hill ahead of the Republican vote for Senate majority leader on Wednesday. (Leah Millis/Reuters)

By Jim Geraghty

November 13, 2024 at 1:53 p.m. EST

Something odd happened in the run-up to the Republican Senate leadership election on Wednesday. The leader of each party in the Senate is chosen shortly after U.S. elections, behind closed doors, with a secret ballot. The Senate is all about relationships, and few senators want to be on lasting bad terms with any colleague — let alone their leader in the chamber.

But a whole bunch of MAGA influencers treated the Senate leadership race like a traditional election, with in-your-face public campaigning — suddenly insisting that President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda depended on the election of Rick Scott (Florida) as the next GOP majority leader, as opposed to Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota or John Cornyn of Texas.

Elon Musk backed Scott on his platform, X. So did Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Vivek Ramaswamy, Charlie Kirk and others in the MAGA-verse.

Tucker Carlson fumed, “Two of the three candidates hate Trump and what he ran on. One of them, John Cornyn, is an angry liberal whose politics are indistinguishable from Liz Cheney’s. The election is Wednesday, it’s by secret ballot, and it will determine whether the new administration succeeds. Rick Scott of Florida is the only candidate who agrees with Donald Trump. Call your senator and demand a public endorsement of Rick Scott.”

Carlson’s contention that Scott is the only one who agrees with Trump is ironic, considering how Thune voted with the Trump administration’s positions 91.4 percent of the time, Cornyn 92.2 percent of the time and Scott 84.1 percent of the time. (You could argue that in the Biden years, Cornyn and Thune were a bit more cooperative with Democrats; Thune voted with the Biden administration’s positions 34.8 percent of the time, Cornyn 48.5 percent and Scott 13 percent.)

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Lo and behold, Scott’s high-profile endorsements and public pressure campaign from the online MAGA world didn’t work. With a secret ballot, plenty of senators didn’t fear the consequences of a vote for Thune or Cornyn, with Thune getting the nod.

Not every established rule, custom and norm in Washington will be revoked as Trump returns to the Oval Office.

Time will tell how Thune performs in the role of majority leader. The job is not primarily focused on ideology, and it isn’t the place for a bomb thrower. As Mitch McConnell showed during his 17-year stint as Republican leader in the majority and minority, the main task is to know your conference and what each member can and can’t vote for without endangering his or her reelection bid. Susan Collins of Maine won’t always be able to vote for the same legislation as Mike Lee of Utah. A majority leader wants to make life as easy as possible for the conference, and, when the opportunity arises, as difficult as possible for the opposition.

There’s little reason to expect any GOP Senate majority leader to butt heads much with Trump — he just won a stunning victory, and Republicans are eager to enact as much of his agenda as possible while they have the opportunity. But Scott’s stumbling in the leadership race is a small demonstration that not all of Washington or the GOP will be Trump-ified.

It appears that gentle favor-trading, relationship-building and collegiality are still the way to become leader of your party in the Senate. Go figure. Effusive endorsements from the likes of Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson just don’t carry that much weight in the halls of the Senate.

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Opinion by Jim Geraghty

Jim Geraghty is National Review’s senior political correspondent, where he writes the daily “Morning Jolt” newsletter, among other writing duties. He’s the author of the novel "The Weed Agency" (a Washington Post bestseller), the nonfiction "Heavy Lifting" with Cam Edwards and "Voting to Kill," and the Dangerous Clique series of thriller novels.follow on X @JimGeraghty