Far-Right Vows to Tie Up the Senate to Avenge Trump Are So Far Mostly Empty

Senator Rick Scott is so furious over the felony conviction of former President Donald J. Trump that the Florida Republican says he and his colleagues need to take it out on the Senate, by acting as disrupters and blocking all Biden administration nominees and legislation.

“We can’t have business as usual,” Mr. Scott insisted as the Senate convened this week for the first time since Mr. Trump’s trial ended in New York with a fusillade of “guilty” verdicts.

Yet so far at least, business as usual it is.

Despite the far-right conservative bloc vowing to draw the line against White House nominees and Democratic legislation, three nominees — one a judge for the usually pummeled District of Columbia, no less — have breezed through the Senate this week with plenty of Republican backing.

Obviously not everyone on the G.O.P. side is willing to draw such a hard line in a fit of pique. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader who has repeatedly clashed with his right wing and done more than perhaps anyone else in his party to obstruct Democratic nominees and initiatives in the past, pooh-poohed the effort.

“The solution is to have a Republican majority,” he told reporters. “There are opportunities when you’re in the minority, but not to set the agenda.”

Senator Mike Lee of Utah has led the charge in the Senate to muck up the works in retaliation for Mr. Trump’s conviction, and by Wednesday afternoon, 12 of his fellow Republicans had signed on to a pledge he put forward to vote against Democratic nominees and bills. The problem for the signatories is that they already typically vote against almost everything from the other side, diminishing the power of their threat to tie up the Senate.