Can Thune Work With Trump?
John Thune is the new Senate majority leader, but he needs to earn the trust of Trump’s supporters.
There’s a certain segment of the Republican Party that hates having to work with people with whom they agree on only 80% of the issues. They think they can enforce some sort of purity test (usually involving personal loyalty to Donald Trump) and then somehow win with a party that would end up being roughly the size of SEAL Team 6. When they lose, they need an internal scapegoat.
That may be ideologically satisfying, but it’s not usually politically successful.
If the GOP is going to succeed in the years ahead and stave off the usual midterm bloodbath for the president’s party, Republicans are going to have to stop shooting at each other. They will need Donald Trump and Mike Johnson and John Thune. They will need Lisa Murkowski and Marjorie Taylor Greene. They must work with small majorities in both chambers of Congress.
South Dakota (Trump +29) Senator John Thune, who made history 20 years ago by knocking off then-Minority Leader Tom Daschle, beat out Texan John Cornyn and Floridian Rick Scott for the Senate’s majority leadership post yesterday. Thune, 63, beat Cornyn in the second ballot, 29-24, and is the youngest of the three men by nearly a decade.
Mitch McConnell, 82, is (finally) stepping aside after leading the Senate GOP for 18 years. Everyone loves to hate McConnell, but here’s a simple fact: Trump would have lost in 2016 had it not been for McConnell holding the line on the Supreme Court and giving highly skeptical conservatives a big reason to vote for a guy few trusted. McConnell then shepherded through hundreds of great judicial nominees, including three to the Supreme Court.
Washington, however, is a “What have you done for me lately?” town, even for those who aren’t in Washington. Because McConnell’s not always been a personal fan of everything that comes out of Trump’s mouth, he sports the tire treads of the MAGA Express.
The two Republican factions need to settle their dispute. Moderates should quit helping Democrats, and populists should tone down the RINO hunting. Both sides ought to bury the hatchet.
They haven’t, so the same people who hate McConnell quickly transferred that hate to his deputy, Thune.
Don’t get me wrong — there’s room for criticism. For example, Thune fell for the bogus George Floyd narrative and the lies about Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. On October 8, 2016, he advocated a nominee swap that would have put the Biden-for-Harris crowd to shame. Even earlier this year, he openly hoped for “other options” instead of Trump. Then again, so did a quarter of the Republican primary electorate, as well as those who didn’t bother voting once his challengers dropped out.
Trump supporters worry that Thune will stand in the way of the president’s agenda, maybe especially on foreign policy. But it seems that Thune has made peace with Trump, which may be why Trump stayed out of the leadership race, and he promises a more open process than McConnell ran.
In an op-ed before winning and comments after his victory, Thune went a long way to dispel such fears. “This Republican team is united. We are on one team,” he said yesterday. “We are excited to reclaim the majority and to get to work with our colleagues in the House to enact President Trump’s agenda.” He emphasized the border, the economy, and energy, three of Trump’s biggest issues.
I can’t help but wonder how Thune and the 52 other Senate Republicans will handle Trump’s cabinet nominees — especially Matt Gaetz’s nomination as attorney general.
Thune is not the first choice of a lot of Republican voters, and he’ll have to overcome that by actually working with Trump and House Speaker Johnson to make the next two or four years a big success. Roughly 76 million Trump voters are counting on it and will be watching.
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