Pressed by Trump, Thune Still Has Support Where It Counts

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has successfully pushed most of Donald Trump’s key campaign promises and cabinet-level nominees through Congress’s upper chamber — but the president is still not totally sold on Thune.

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Asked by reporters on Wednesday whether the majority leader is the right man to manage the Senate GOP conference, Trump replied, “Well we’re gonna find out. I’ll let you know.”

Trump’s remark is just one of many slings and arrows Thune has taken in recent months from the White House — as well as from critics in the House of Representatives and Republican base — over the fact that the SAVE America Act has stalled in the Senate. Those attacks have only intensified as the Senate approaches its annual August recess, which is set to begin at the end of this week. The president has clamored for Thune to either cancel the recess or abolish the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold to push the election-security bill across the finish line. But the majority leader is clear that he has the votes neither to pass the bill nor to abolish the filibuster.

SAVE America’s proponents see the waning days leading up to the recess as a pivotal time for passing the bill, but Thune has shown that his priorities as the Senate prepares to go on break are almost entirely different from those of the president and the GOP base. He has chosen to focus on institutional and bipartisan measures, rather than the partisan bill his critics want him to send to Trump’s desk. But even as detractors have called for him to lose his job, Thune has maintained the key support he needs in the Senate and elsewhere.

The Senate already had a packed schedule set for the last two weeks before recess. The parties need to negotiate a spending bill in advance of their deadline to prevent a government shutdown at the end of September, renew a key surveillance authority that has been dark for over a month, and pass a bill to sanction Russia dedicated to the late Senator Lindsey Graham — none of which they accomplished last week.

Thune rejected Trump’s Monday call to cancel the August recess for SAVE America hours after he made it and laid out his objectives before going on break, which differ markedly from Trump and his most ardent supporters. “My first priority is going to be to fund the government,” he told reporters. He added that he also hoped to tackle nominations for executive branch positions, sanctions on Russia, and a bill focused on college sports.

Conveniently for Thune, those measures either have the prospect of passing with the support of Democrats or can be exempted from the filibuster under existing rules. Critics in the White House and the House of Representatives have acted as though abolishing the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act would be easy for Thune, who has defended the merits of the 60-vote threshold, but a vote to do so would almost assuredly fail — likely miserably. Last week, Thune recounted a past meeting between administration officials and about 20 Republican senators at which they discussed getting rid of the filibuster. “There were 15 ‘no’s,’” Thune said. Other Republican senators have also said that there is a sizable bloc in their conference opposed to lowering the filibuster threshold. Senator John Cornyn of Texas estimated last week that it made up at least half the Republicans in the Senate.

That’s one reason why Thune can be confident in his support among his fellow GOP senators: Many of them privately agree with him. Asked Thursday about Trump’s insinuating that he might not be the right person to be Senate Republican Leader, Thune told reporters, “He doesn’t vote in our elections.”

Those who want to keep the filibuster have, as expected, backed Thune as he’s taken heat in recent months. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma told National Review that the attacks on Thune are unfair. “Any time you don’t get what you want, you look at the leader and go, ‘Okay, he should be able to magically figure out how to be able to make things work,’” he said.

But even the most rabid Senate supporters of SAVE America are not necessarily directing their ire at Thune. Though Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who is running to be governor of his state, said Republicans should “do away with the filibuster” for the sake of the SAVE America Act, he also offered a defense of Thune. “He’s trying to manage an impossible task,” Tuberville told NR. “I don’t know what he could do through the leadership, through the rules, . . . to get people to get on his side. But right now, he doesn’t have the votes.”

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Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who would also like to weaken the filibuster to pass SAVE America, stressed that he had no ill will toward the leader. “I don’t have anything to question what he’s doing,” he told NR. “He’s working hard.” Scott added, “I don’t have any tension with him.”

Even after Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said Thune was being “too cautious” in his negotiations with Senate Democrats to avoid a government shutdown, he couched his criticism in a statement of support. “I’ve made it very clear where I stand: John’s my leader. I support him,” he told NR.

But just as Trump does not vote in the election for GOP Senate leader, Thune’s Senate colleagues (minus South Dakota’s other senator, Mike Rounds) do not vote in the elections that send him to the Senate. House Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida called for her chamber to tack the SAVE America Act onto the must-pass bills it sends to the Senate. If Thune strips it out, “his State party should censure him and/or he should be primaried.”

However, members of the South Dakota Republican Party already tried to censure Thune, and it did not go their way. At its June party convention, delegates voted on a censure resolution that alleged Thune’s performance as leader had been “found wanting” in many ways, but “his failure in regards to the SAVE America Act is his most glaring, and can not be ignored.” In the end, the resolution failed by voice vote, eliciting applause from those in the convention hall.

South Dakota State Senate Majority Leader Jim Mehlhaff claimed that, although there were delegates to the convention who were upset with Thune, he is still popular among Republicans in his state.

“I think his standing among South Dakota rank-and-file Republicans is very strong,” Mehlhaff told NR. “The Republican convention has been controlled by a faction of the party that is more populist, I would say, and I don’t think they speak for most Republicans, frankly.”

With his support still strong among his Senate colleagues and his voters back home, Thune can enter the final week before the August recess focusing on what he wants.

The first item on the agenda when the Senate gets back Monday? Funding the government.

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