The Senate returns to session Tuesday. The new members will be there too. They’ll have a candidate forum Tuesday night, where the men vying for Senate Republican leadership will make their case, and on Wednesday, the GOP senators and senators-elect of the 119th Congress will choose their next leader.
It’s an important job. Under Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), power and money have become more and more centralized while the Senate’s regular order has been pushed aside — and along with it, the power of Senate committees and their chairmen to seriously shape policy.
Inside the Senate, support can be mercurial … and how much does ideology play into it anyway?
And while the House of Representatives has its essential role in governance, and though its members are generally more raucous and more conservative than their counterparts in the upper chamber, you can expect all that to calm down in the next Congress. When the same party controls both chambers and the presidency, it’s business time — and the House tends to follow the Senate’s lead without all the drama of the last four years. So Senate majority leader? Important role.
