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To outsiders, it looks a whole lot like Donald Trump has unrivaled control over the current Republican Party. He rode a remarkable and ahistoric wave back to re-election last week, one in which his allies expanded their majority in the House, and the Senate will return in January with Republicans holding the gavels. To the lay eye, Trump and his GOP lackeys are going to have free reign of Washington for at least the next two years. Democrats, it’s best to just cower and cede ground, right?
But look a little closer, and the Republican monopoly is a little less certain. The House is destined to be a mess, given a narrow margin of majority and the parochial whims of some of the most right-wing members. Republicans on most measures are expected to need a handful of Democratic votes to get must-pass pieces of legislation across the finish line, and that is going to force at least some modicum of whittling of conservative wish lists. In the Senate, the surviving filibuster demands a 60-vote bar for most measures, again needing a handful of Democratic votes to lift the big pieces into law. Put simply: Trump was never going to get a blank check from his pals in Congress.
That check got even less blank on Wednesday, when Senate Republicans picked their successor for Mitch McConnell, who is ending a record 18 years as party Leader. In his place, the GOP lawmakers elevated Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, who spent the last few years as a watchful student of McConnell’s mastery of the Senate and its quirks. Similarly an institutionalist, Thune bested colleagues John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida for the job on the second ballot, and Cornyn moved that the decision be made unanimous.
“We are excited to reclaim the majority and to get work with our colleagues in the House to enact President Trump’s agenda,” Thune said after the election.
Careful words, sure. But total honesty? Not entirely.
In picking Thune, Republicans rejected the MAGA-backed Scott for a by-the-books establishment figure who is as unassuming as he is efficient. Thune is one of the most powerful people in Washington that folks outside the Beltway have never heard of. He has a national fundraising network—$33 million raised for Republicans this cycle alone—and his alumni are peppered throughout the conservative ecosystem of Hill offices, committee staff, and K Street lobbying shops. To put it plainly: Thune positioned himself shrewdly to become McConnell’s logical heir.
And that, precisely, is why President-elect Donald Trump must be stewing. Trump has made his contempt for business-as-usual Washington part of the deal. Trump famously loathed McConnell and his insistence that precedent and decorum rule the day, not haste or instinct. Thune has a little more appetite for gut instinct, but he is a gentleman who rightly matches the Senate’s staid reputation. After Trump dispatched a mob to attack the chamber on Jan. 6, 2021, Thune broke with him in a big way that day. Four years earlier, Thune was among the Republicans who called on Trump to stand down in the wake of the Access Hollywood crisis that ultimately proved irrelevant to the race. While Trump was President, Thune was an ardent critic of Trump’s obsession with tariffs.
Though this involved a secret ballot unlike Senate votes, the fact that the chamber’s Republicans sided with Thune is an early—and maybe premature—warning that they mightn’t be the rubber stamp that Trump Republicans had hoped to find. Thune nodded along politely when Trump demanded the chamber give him recess appointments for his Cabinet should confirmation hearings drag on too long, but Thune carefully added that his legions would work on speedy vetting—not unilateral green lights for his picks.
That caution and calibration is why Trump has long harbored suspicion against Thune. So deep was the antipathy, Trump actively sought Kristi Noem as a primary challenger against Thune in 2022, although she ran for re-election instead and is now on deck to be his nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Thune is a normie in the purest sense, and his colleagues decided they trusted him over Cornyn—another mainstream conservative—or burn-it-down billionaire Scott to dictate what measures get moved to the Senate floor and which get buried in the bottom of a desk drawer.
Thune’s win is also a signal that Trump and his inner-circle—specifically billionaire Elon Musk—will not have total control over D.C. Musk had openly supported Scott for the gig, and many in Trump’s orbit had re-upped stories about how Thune was perceived as a disloyal adherent to the MAGA movement. But on the secret ballot, Thune prevailed as the level-headed, plain-spoken grandfather who could keep the intentionally inert Senate steady. With Trump likely to have his sycophants in the House ready to give his impulses a go-ahead order, and the courts remade to his—and McConnell’s—liking, the Senate may be the fail-safe in government. The dam may yet break, but at least for now it holds. It may be the best those in Washington fearful of Trump 2.0 can hope for in the next few years.
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