Sen. John Thune accused of betraying GOP voters over filibuster rules

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R.S.D.), his mentor and predecessor Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Like, he is a creature of the rigid and respected upper body of Congress who has completely forgotten his duty to the Republican voters.

It’s simple math. The Senate issue that GOP voters care about most is passing the Save America Act, along with voter ID requirements and other election security measures, even if it means blowing up fraud.

But GOP leadership insists it is simply impossible to lift the 60-vote threshold and pass this wildly popular legislation.

Thune’s dilemma, then, is whether his duty is to the Senate institution whose rules and traditions he seeks to preserve, or to the 95% of Republican voters screaming from the mountaintop to pass the bill.

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It is important to recognize in this discussion that “Senate Majority Leader” is not a constitutional position. Thune is not the Senate president, Vice President J.D. Vance is. Thune is truly a party boss.

Except he refuses to patronize his party.

The positions of Senate majority leader and minority leader, which actually came first in this regard, are a product of the 1920s and evolved over time until they were enacted in the 1950s, mostly under the administration of then-Senate majority leader and future president Lyndon Baines Johnson. There was a party boss now.

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Like the filibuster itself, majority and minority leaders are nowhere in the Constitution. These are rules that the Senate simply invented, supposedly to make the upper house work better.

LBJ address (Keystone/Getty Images)

A cynic might also point out that the 60-vote threshold required to do basically anything gives each senator far more power than they would have without it. In fact, a bunch of bitchy objectors have the power to veto almost everything.

The point is that as a party boss, when nearly every GOP voter wants the Save America Act, Thune’s job is to openly side with voters, not through a lapel pin.

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So far, Thune has tried to play the banditry issue both ways; He always insisted that he did not have the right to vote, but never said whether he supported the nuclear bomb. He wants us to treat this as a controversial issue, but it is not.

If he supports killing the filibuster, his job as party boss is to cajole, threaten, and keep a handful of recalcitrant Republican senators in line. You know, like LBJ famously did by any means necessary. Thune did none of this.

On the other hand, if Thune wants to maintain the 60-vote threshold, the nominal head of the GOP should resign or be replaced, not because he owes a debt to President Donald Trump, but because he owes it to the party’s voters.

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Make no mistake, these voters sitting out the midterms may or may not be heard from in the worst case scenario because what does it matter if nothing passes the Senate anyway?

Everyone on the ground working to encourage a conservative win is screaming at the leadership in Washington and begging them to understand how terrible Thune’s betrayal really is.

Scott Presler, who does little else but eat, sleep, and register voters across America, put it this way on X Post this week: “A lot of voters, along with the White House, the Republican House, and the Republican Senate, are demoralized by the lack of action, especially by the Senate, to pass legislation.”

Demoralized is certainly the right word, and John Thune’s message to voters is: “I’m sorry, but we can’t change the rules we made up.”

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While President Trump does not have, and should not have, any authority over Leader Thune, he is absolutely right that Democrats are sticking together much better than Republicans. We’ll see this in action when Democrats inevitably kill the filibuster at the first opportunity.

Thune is not the leader of the Senate, he is the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate. His job is to deliver results for Republican voters. If he can’t do that, then someone who can needs to step in.

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