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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., much like his mentor and predecessor Sen. Mitch McConnell R-Ky., is a creature of that austere and august upper body of Congress who has completely forgotten his duty to Republican voters.
It’s simple math. The Senate issue that the GOP electorate cares most about is passing the Save America Act, with its voter ID requirements and other election security measures, even if it means blowing up the filibuster.
But GOP leadership insists that ending the 60-vote threshold and pushing this hyper-popular legislation through is simply impossible.
Thune’s dilemma is whether his duty in this situation is to the institution of the Senate, whose rules and customs he seeks to preserve, or to the 95% of Republican voters shouting from the mountaintop to just pass the bill.
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It is important to recognize in this debate that “Senate Majority Leader” is not a constitutional position. Thune isn’t president of the Senate, Vice President JD Vance is. Thune is quite literally a party boss.
Except he refuses to boss his party.
The position of Senate majority leader, and minority leader for that matter, which actually came first, is a product of the 1920s, and evolved over time until it was mostly codified under then-Senate majority leader, and future president, Lyndon Baines Johnson in the 1950s. Now there was a party boss.
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Like the filibuster itself, majority and minority leaders appear nowhere in the Constitution. These are rules that the Senate has simply invented, supposedly to make the upper chamber work better.
A cynic might also point out that the 60-vote threshold to do basically anything gives each and every senator far more power than they would have without it. In effect, a handful of bloody-minded objectors have the power to veto almost anything.
The point here is that as a party boss, when pretty much every GOP voter wants the Save America Act, Thune’s job is clearly to side with the voters, not with his lapel pin.
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Up until now, Thune has tried to play the filibuster question both ways, always insisting that he doesn’t have the votes, but never really saying if he supports nuking it or not. He wants us to treat it as a moot point, but it is not one.
If he supports killing the filibuster, then his job as party boss is to cajole, threaten, and whip his handful of recalcitrant Republican senators into line. You know, as LBJ famously did by whatever means necessary. Thune has done none of that.
If, on the other hand, Thune wants to keep the 60-vote threshold, then he should step down, or be replaced, not because he owes anything to President Donald Trump, the titular head of the GOP, but because he owes it to the party’s voters.
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Make no mistake, those voters will be heard from, or, in the worst-case scenario, not heard from as they sit out a midterm because, well, what difference does it make if nothing can pass the Senate anyway?
Everyone who works to promote conservative wins on the ground has been screaming at the leadership in Washington, begging them to understand just how dire this betrayal by Thune really is.
Scott Presler, who seems to do little more than eat, sleep and register voters across America, put it this way in an X Post this week: “With a White House, Republican House, & Republican Senate, many voters are getting demoralized due to the lack of action — especially on the part of our Senate — to pass legislation.”
Demoralized is exactly the right word, and John Thune’s message to those voters is: “Sorry, but we can’t change the rules that we made up ourselves.”
While President Trump does not, and should not, have any authority over Leader Thune, he is absolutely correct that Democrats stick together far better than Republicans. We will see that in action when Democrats inevitably kill the filibuster the first chance they get.
Thune is not the leader of the Senate, he is the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate. His job is to get results for Republican voters. If he can’t do that, then somebody needs to step in who can.
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