It's hard to believe there was once a time I was excited about Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).
In 2004, the first election season I ever threw myself into, I focused most of my attention on the Bush-Cheney campaign. One Senate race caught my attention too, and that was Thune's. It was the first time I'd ever donated to an out-of-state campaign, and watching him knock off Tom Daschle, then the Senate minority leader, seemed like a genuine conservative victory.
I don't regret supporting Thune back then. It’s just that he has since become just another useless establishment Republican, and right now that failure is costing conservatives dearly.
I just don't get what happened to him. His push to moderate the party made that perfectly clear. Sitting down with Bret Baier on Fox News, Thune argued that the GOP needs to moderate if it wants to win again.
“I think we've gotta start talking to independent voters,” he told Baier. “Like I said, it's a third of the electorate. And, they went against us in four of the top Senate races in the country. We lost them by over 30 points. You cannot make that up with just Republican votes. You've got to be able to talk to the people out there who in general elections are going to decide it.”
Saying, “We’ve got to start talking to independent voters,” here is Swamp talk for “run to the middle.” Running to the middle is not what got Trump popularly elected in 2024, but it is what got Republicans crushed in the midterms. Bold conservatism is what will attract… https://t.co/8Q6SimFMgQ
— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) November 11, 2026
Newsflash to Thune: Democrats aren't moderating.
They haven't moved an inch toward the center, and they've said for years that they'll scrap the filibuster the moment they're back in power. Yet the guy who just lost the Senate majority thinks the answer is for Republicans to give up even more ground.
Unfortunately, Senate Republicans re-elected Thune as their leader this week without a single challenger, even though they lose control of the chamber in January. They suffered a brutal midterm defeat, and nobody in the conference stepped up to say the man in charge should answer for it.
Thune's midterm postmortem was ridiculous.
He spent it making excuses for how ineffective the GOP was, as though the results had nothing to do with his poor leadership.
ICYMI: Sen. Kennedy Warns the GOP to Stop ‘Urinating on Our Hands’ Before the Dems Take Over
"If you look at what we did in these two years, and my question for them was, what could we have done differently?" Thune said. "I mean, we survived two long government shutdowns without giving the Democrats a single one of their demands. The working families tax cuts legislation was historic. First time we've done meaningful entitlement reform in three decades. The tax policy made permanent. Trump newborn accounts, you know, educational choice. We talked about all of them."
GOP Leader Thune: "We accomplished a lot. What could we have done differently?" https://t.co/O9X2OybFvp
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) November 10, 2026
Sorry, but that list is a shield, and a flimsy one.
Surviving shutdowns is a low bar. Voters don't hand you a majority so you can brag about holding the line. They hand it to you so you can deliver.
And I think we can all agree on something Thune could have done differently: nuke the filibuster and pass the SAVE America Act. The House did its job and passed bill after bill, including commonsense legislation with huge bipartisan support like the SAVE America Act. Those bills hit the Senate and died at the hands of Democrat obstruction, because Thune refused to touch the filibuster.
Democrats have told us exactly what they'll do with the filibuster when they’re in charge. Thune has protected a rule that his opponents have already said they’re going to abandon, and in return he’s got absolutely nothing.
The Republicans lost the midterms partly because of high gas prices, and no one leader can control all the economic headwinds. Thune’s Senate, in fact, gave the base absolutely no reason to show up and vote. If you’ve got the majority and can’t do a damn thing with it, what’s the point?
Telling the base to moderate to win back the independents is exactly the wrong message. The base stayed home because the GOP was ineffective, and the independents voted for the Democrats because they simply couldn’t see any positive outcome from a Republican majority.
Moderation fixes neither problem.
A party that doesn’t exercise its power when it is given the majority has no right to be asking them to remain in power. Until the Senate Republicans find a leader who gets that, they’re going to keep losing the people who sent them to Washington in the first place.
