The Donald Isn't the Only Architect of the Midterm Disaster

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John Thune's do-nothing Senate majority stymied the president's agenda.

By Scott McKay

I suppose I’ve become cynical enough that it’s very rare to read something that shocks me into a cough or a spit-take, but I nearly had one when I saw this on Wednesday…

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., vowed that Republicans “will not stand idly by as the far-left, socialist wing of the Democrat Party attempts to unwind everything we’ve done.”

Thune’s pledge early Wednesday came after Democrats captured control of both chambers of Congress in a sweeping midterm election victory, prompting conservatives to demand accountability from Republican leaders.

In a lengthy post on X, Thune defended the GOP’s record under President Donald Trump, citing tax cuts, border security, judicial confirmations, and economic policies he said benefited American families.

“Over the last two years, Senate Republicans have put up a strong record of accomplishment that’s created safer streets, more money in Americans’ pockets, and new opportunities for families and businesses to get ahead,” Thune wrote.

This was Thune’s X post. It’s worth clicking on just to see the utterly brutal ratio Thune received. I’ll confess that if you scroll through, you’ll see my contribution as well.

While Thune was touting his utterly meager achievements as the Senate Majority Leader before losing that job amid what looks like a nine-seat turnover (not a single pickup, and losses in nine states, most of which were thought to be unlosable) in Tuesday’s midterms, House Speaker Mike Johnson was giving a dignified resignation as the GOP’s caucus leader in that body.

What does this fake-baked nincompoop actually do all day?

There isn’t any justice in Johnson returning to the back bench in the House and Thune sticking around to misrule the GOP Senate caucus after what happened Tuesday.

Thune was the problem on Capitol Hill the last two years. Johnson actually did his job.

Let’s understand that the House has passed hundreds of bills on countless subjects, most of them codifying President Trump’s executive orders, only to watch Thune’s Senate do nothing to send them to Trump’s desk. Most, Thune let die either in committee or in a Democrat filibuster. Some 50 such bills sit at the table in the Senate with no action whatsoever.

I met Thune at a thing the Heritage Foundation put on probably a decade ago when I was in Washington on some advocacy junket or other. Thune gave a speech on some boring policy topic, and there was a short meet-and-greet, and I got to shake his hand and look him in the eye. The first thing that came to my mind was “empty suit,” and it struck me as utterly weird that people were saying he was leadership or even presidential material.

Contrast that with meeting Ted Cruz, for example, and it’s a completely different experience. Like Cruz or not, you know he’s in the room with you.

The joke was always that if Mitch McConnell were ever to stop suddenly — this was when McConnell was ambulatory/actually alive, mind you — that Thune would break his nose against McConnell’s tailbone. That’s really the only explanation that makes sense as to how this guy got as far as he has.

And just like McConnell, Thune spends all his time bragging about how many judges his caucus has managed to confirm. He doesn’t tell you that right now he’s leaving 135 nominees on the table for the next Senate to confirm, something that obviously won’t happen, while he has plans for a quite perfunctory lame-duck session.

And what’s true — of course it’s true — is that John Thune isn’t just some semi-amiable dunce who just can’t convince his caucus to legislate effectively. The last two years aren’t error; they’re enemy action. Thune didn’t pass the SAVE Act, for example, because he didn’t want to.

Don’t give me that crap about how he couldn’t get to 50 votes so that Vice President JD Vance could break the tie and send the SAVE Act to Trump’s desk. That’s a clear and obvious lie, and Thune is going to prove it’s a lie by not moving the SAVE Act in the lame-duck session.

Oh, Susan Collins wouldn’t help to pass the SAVE Act? Why, because it would cost her re-election? Well, gosh… I guess that objection doesn’t work anymore, does it?

All of this is a fraud. It’s a bait-and-switch the Washington Republican Party has pulled on its voters over and over and over again. John Thune is the head coach of the Washington Generals, the team full of paid marks the Harlem Globetrotters clown on in exhibition after exhibition, except in these sham contests the score is kept for real and the public is forced to pay full price for the tickets whether we want to attend or not.

You would think at some point that there would be some shame kicking in. And you’d be pretty sorely disappointed.

Yesterday I had some pretty choice words for President Trump and his role in the midterm ass-kicking that happened on Tuesday. But the thing about Trump is that while there were mistakes made — failing to get the public on board with the Iran war and then not finishing the damn thing well in advance of the midterms was, it turns out, just unforgivable, and it wasn’t the only problem — at least I still get the impression he’s a patriot who’s trying to do right by the country in the long run. I don’t like how the Iran thing has been run, and as I said yesterday it would have been such a better idea to have pushed a regime change in Cuba first, but Trump has been consistent for decades that he won’t allow the Iranian regime to have nukes and I believe him when he says he thinks this was the only way to stop that.

But Thune? He’s a military-industrial complex parrot, and yet as the Senate Majority Leader, he doesn’t even know he has a bill waiting that would stop $40 million a week going to the Taliban, much less that he’s on top of doing something about that?

What does this fake-baked nincompoop actually do all day?

Punchbowl News says the GOP Senate caucus doesn’t have any appetite for a debate over Thune’s future as the GOP’s Senate leader. The vote, or what passes for one, is supposed to happen next week. According to Ron Johnson and Mike Lee, there won’t even be an after-action meeting about Tuesday’s debacle before then.

Spend all the time you want blaming Trump for the midterm disaster. But don’t spend all of your time there. Because in the aftermath of it, you really should ask your GOP senator, if you still have one, very rudely why he or she is interested in being led by this man after the results, or lack thereof, that he has produced.

Original Here

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