In the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, Senate Republican leaders knew that Donald Trump was pressuring their members to reject certification of Joe Biden’s victory, but they pleaded with GOP senators to be more responsible. In fact, Senate Republican leaders told their members there wasn’t even any point in trying, since the radical scheme wouldn’t work anyway.
In fact, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, publicly conceded in December 2020 that the plan to reject election certification “would go down like a shot dog.”
As NBC News reported a while back, Trump was not pleased.
An infuriated Trump responded by bashing Thune, calling him a “RINO” or “Republican in Name Only,” on Twitter. “RINO John Thune, ‘Mitch’s boy’, should just let it play out. South Dakota doesn’t like weakness. He will be primaried in 2022, political career over!!!” Trump wrote.
The idea that the South Dakotan was a faux Republican was among the nuttier condemnations Trump has ever directed at a member of Congress. After all, Thune voted with the Trump White House more than 90 percent of the time, and has earned a reputation as a conservative stalwart. Even after Trump’s second impeachment trial, Thune conceded that the former president’s Jan. 6 actions were “inexcusable,” but the GOP senator voted to acquit him anyway.
To the extent that the contemporary GOP has a “centrist” wing — a dubious assertion, to be sure — no one would think of Thune as a member of such a contingent.
And yet, Trump decided the senator’s career really had to end. The former president even publicly lobbied South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to launch a primary campaign against the Senate minority whip. She declined.
It’s against this backdrop that Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman, an MSNBC contributor, noted that the filing deadline to run in South Dakota’s Senate race was this week. How many Republicans filed to run against Thune in a GOP primary? None. How many Democrats filed to run against Thune in a general election? None.
For the second time in three election cycles, Thune will run unopposed. Barring some unforeseen catastrophe, the senator’s odds of re-election are 100 percent.
As an electoral matter, none of this is especially surprising — it’s not as if Democrats saw Thune as a vulnerable incumbent — but as a political matter, Trump’s earlier tantrum stands out.
The former president assured everyone that the senator would be primaried and the South Dakotan’s career was “over!!!” NBC News’ report added a couple of months ago that the former president’s allies had their “knives out” for the senator.
But Trump was obviously wrong and Thune’s career is just fine. Let that be a lesson to other Republican policymakers: One can clash with Trump and live to tell the tale.
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