Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., on Tuesday pushed back an effort to slow a leadership vote and emerged as commander of the Senate’s soon-to-be significantly diminished Republican conference.
Despite losing at least seven GOP seats and the majority in a gruesome midterm, 31 Republican senators thought it a good idea to go ahead with the conference leadership election. Facing no challenger, Thune will now become the leader of a minority party that lost control because it failed to deliver on the America First agenda that so many of its globalist, RINO members abhor.
Failure rewarded. Lessons not learned.
Many of the same Republicans are laying the blame for the blue wave that swept them out of power entirely at President Donald Trump’s feet. They’re “furious,” The Hill reports.
Thune’s compatriots were returned to their posts as well, including Sen. John Barrasso, R.- Wyo., as whip, Tom Cotton R-Ark., as conference chairman, Shelley Moore Capito, R-W. Va., policy committee chair, and James Lankford, R-Okla., to serve as conference vice chairman.
The frustration from the conservatives who tried to slow the runaway Thune train was palpable, too.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who led a group of Republican senators asking the conference to delay the leadership vote, said he didn’t participate in Tuesday’s election “because a defeat of this magnitude demands serious reflection and change.”
“Holding a rushed election ignores the message our voters sent. We must acknowledge where and why we failed and develop strategies to succeed,” Johnson wrote on his X account.
“I hope our conference can unite, learn from this moment, and do a better job listening to the American people and addressing their concerns,” Wisconsin’s senior senator added.
‘Make it Hard to Do Things’
The problem is that Thune and his cadre of RINOs didn’t listen to the conservative voters who gave them the majority in 2024. They failed to do anything other than offer a show debate on election integrity reform, legislation supported by the vast majority of Americans. They failed to codify myriad executive orders on everything from border security and immigration law to government fraud fighting. They couldn’t even get their act together extend a ban on taxpayer funds going to Planned Parenthood and its abortion industrial complex.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told Laura Ingraham over the weekend that the Senate failed to deliver for the American people.
“In July, I had to fight to get a bill through that matched H.R. 2, our border security bill from last Congress. We reintroduced it this time, H.R. 9773, it’s my bill. It would do the things you just talked about, in terms of border security, in terms of asylum, parole, all the abuses under the Biden administration which you know the Democrats are going to want to bring back. We should codify [Trump’s orders]. Make it permanent. Codify what the president has been doing,” Roy told the Fox News host.
After being crowned minority leader Tuesday, Thune turned to his tired, old tropes. He only has 53 senators. He’s helpless against the filibuster and the 60 votes needed to smash through it. His hands are tied. What can one man do?
“The problem is, for people out there in America, this is the way the founders designed the Senate, to make it work exactly this way, to make it hard to do things,” Thune audaciously told Fox News’ Bret Baier on Tuesday edition of Special Report. The filibuster as we know it was not designed by the founders; it is the product of a lazy, modern-day Upper House that wanted to punch out by noon on Thursday’s and head back to work on mid-Monday afternoons.
Thune went on to note that the filibuster protects minority rights.
“It gives the minority a voice in our government, which now we are going to appreciate because we are going to be that minority,” the soon-to-be Senate minority leader insisted.
It’s that kind of naivety that very well could indefinitely turn the keys of power over to Democrats via limitless one-party rule.
‘Mitch’s Technique’
Johnson said Republicans already face an uphill battle in retaking control of the House and Senate in the next couple of election cycles. Now, he and others who warned the GOP establishment that Democrats will nuke the filibuster if they take back the Senate believe it’s now just a matter of time.
“They’re telling us what they are going to do. They will eliminate the filibuster, they will pack the Supreme Court, they will turn D.C. and Puerto Rico into states. There’s four more Democratic senators. They’ll nationalize elections … There will be no control,” Johnson told me Monday on The Vicki McKenna Show on WIBA in Madison.
“It will be like Venezuela, right? One man. One vote. One time,” the Wisconsin senator added. “Their goal has always been a one-party nation, and they are almost reaching fruition of it. They will gain that if they win the presidency.”
Thune learned a great deal from his mentor, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history who appears to be catatonically serving out his final term in office. Johnson noted that the deliberative Senate’s Republican conference once waited on average 40 days after the election to vote for its leadership team. That window plummeted to an average of nine days after elections during McConnell’s tenure as head of the Senate GOP.
“That was Mitch’s technique. Schedule the election the Tuesday you get back from the [general] election, win or lose, and just reelect the leadership by acclamation,” Johnson said.
‘I’ve Utterly Lost Hope in You Guys’
For disaffected Republicans, Thune’s installment as minority leader is more of the same. Some are blaming Johnson and his colleagues who moved to delay the vote. They assert the stall campaign wasn’t enough.
“Why didn’t you put up a candidate … or run yourself? Now not only is the author of our defeat rewarded with continued leadership, but none of the ‘good guys’ bothered to put up a fight,” Colin O’Brien responded to Johnson’s X post. “Catastrophic outcome today. For the first time in 44 years as a Republican, I’ve utterly lost hope in you guys. Utterly gutless.”
Thune and crew still have a chance to change minds and accomplish something, but the clock is ticking. Knowing the leftists in the Senate will move to nuke the filibuster, Roy said Republicans could “tweak some things” to move legislation through before the end of the session.
“But right now I don’t even know if we have 51 Republicans [in the Senate] to agree, but I’d like to try,” he told Ingraham.
‘They are Standing in the Way’
Looks like the swamp machines are already up to their old tricks, however. Arkansas Republican Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton were reportedly trying to block the appointment of Arkansas District Court Judge Lee Rudofsky to the 8th Circuit Court of appeals.
“From what I’ve heard, Senator Boozman is lobbying some of the Republicans to vote against him to stop him in his tracks … The Arkansas senators are objecting to the president’s pick. They are standing in the way of the president getting the nominee he wants on the federal bench,” Robert Luther, former associate counsel to Trump during his first term, told KATV.
Luther and others say the senators prefer Arkansas Supreme Court Justice and former state Republican Party chairman Cody Hiland for the post, despite the fact that no one has called Rudofsky’s qualifications into question — other than he has the backing of Trump. They got their wish on Tuesday, when the president withdrew Rudofsky’s name and nominated Hiland.
Thune, meanwhile, has denied accusations that he’s maneuvering to keep newly-elected Tennessee Gov. Marsha Blackburn from naming Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., to fill out her term in the Senate.
“I haven’t had any conversations with her about that,” Thune told reporters on Tuesday, according to the Washington Examiner. “I mean, Marsha Blackburn is going to make that decision.”
Burchett has long been a thorn in the side of establishment Republicans on Capitol Hill. He’d certainly make Senate RINOs uneasy.
Roy said Republicans should get to work and keep working to codify Trump’s agenda and approve his nominees before time runs out.
“They should never break. They should come in on Monday and stay through Jan. 3,” Roy said of Senate Republicans.
Thune says his majority Republicans will remain in session through the lame-duck to confirm Trump’s judicial and executive nominations, as well as other “consequential legislation.” That apparently means extending the calendar to include late nights, weekends, even holidays.
“So, we’re going to make the most of the time that we’ve got,” the majority leader said. “And that means extending the calendar here, the number of days we’re here, the number of hours we’re here, the number of votes we may end up taking.”
“But we are going to finish this legislative session strong, and then we are in the process of preparing for the 120th,” he added.
Johnson said Republicans have got to get their act together to “reenergize our supporters who are PO’d at us” and disillusioned.
“You hear way too many say, ‘Ah, they’re all the same.’ We’re not. We’re not even close. We’re far from perfect as Republicans, but Democrats are orders of magnitude worse. Their ideologies, their policies are destructive,” the Wisconsin senator said.
Listen to the complete interview with Sen. Ron Johnson here.
