Senate Republicans Double Down On John Thune’s Failed Leadership
M.D. Kittle
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.
GOP Leader Thune defends Republicans not passing the SAVE Act: "This is the way the Founders designed the Senate. The filibuster gives a minority in the country a voice, which now we are going to appreciate. We are going to be that minority." pic.twitter.com/hjMvAfGkHb
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) November 10, 2026