An angry letter from a retiring Republican senator has kicked off a new round of handwringing inside the Senate Republican caucus.
According to Punchbowl News’ Andrew Desiderio, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who has grown increasingly alienated from his own party in recent years, fired off an angry 15-page letter to the caucus, in response to Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) going scorched earth on the members of his party who aren’t trying to blow up Senate rules to pass President Donald Trump’s voter restriction bill, the SAVE America Act.
These attacks, Tillis said in the letter, are a “circular firing squad.”
He further called out the party for blocking his amendment to the reconciliation bill to restrict Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which the administration withdrew amid intense public outrage, but which can still be restarted without an act of Congress. “We missed an opportunity to remove a political albatross (the 1776 fund) from around the necks of our colleagues who are in cycle. Instead, we added weight to that albatross by having 41 members vote to protect the program.”
According to Desiderio, he is now hearing from “multiple Republicans” who thought that, while Tillis raised some valid points, he was crossing the line in the letter when “he invoked a Tuberville staffer’s marriage to an NRSC official [and] said: ‘Do these people talk?’”
All of this comes as Republicans struggle to hold together plans for the reconciliation bill, which limped through the Senate and now faces an uncertain whip count in the House. It also comes as Republicans are on the defensive about their agenda following controversial Trump remarks about the economy and the midterm elections.
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