Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., is, like his mentor and predecessor, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a creature of that austere and august higher body of Congress that has completely forgotten its duty to Republican voters.
It’s simple math. The Senate issue that Republican Party voters care about most is passing the Save America Act, with voter ID requirements and other election security measures, even if it means blowing up the filibuster.
But Republican Party leadership insists that ending the 60-vote threshold and passing this hyper-popular legislation is simply impossible.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, joined by Senator Tim Scott, speaks to reporters after the weekly Senate Republican Policy Luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on March 3, 2026. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Thune’s dilemma is whether his duty in this situation is to the institution of the Senate, whose rules and customs he is trying to preserve, or to the 95% of Republican voters who are shouting from the mountaintop to simply pass the bill.
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It is important to recognize in this debate that “Senate Majority Leader” is not a constitutional position. Thune is not president of the Senate, but Vice President J.D. Vance is. Thune is literally a party boss.
Only he refuses to lead his party.
The position of Senate Majority Leader, and Minority Leader for that matter, which actually came first, is a product of the 1920s and evolved over time until it was largely codified under then Senate Majority Leader and future President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the 1950s. Now there was a party boss.
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Like the filibuster itself, majority and minority leaders appear nowhere in the Constitution. These are rules that the Senate simply invented, ostensibly to make the Senate function better.
Lyndon Baines Johnson was a Senate majority leader before becoming president. (Keystone/Getty Images)
A cynic might also point out that the 60-vote threshold to do virtually anything gives each senator much more power than he would have without it. In fact, a handful of bloody opponents have the power to veto almost anything.
The point here is that as party boss, while virtually every Republican voter wants the Save America Act, Thune’s job is clearly to side with the voters, not to use his lapel pin.
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So far, Thune has tried to play the filibuster question both ways, always insisting he doesn’t have the votes but never actually saying whether he favors nuclear weapons or not. He wants us to consider it a moot point, but it isn’t.
If he supports killing the filibuster, then it is his job as party boss to persuade, threaten and bring his handful of recalcitrant Republican senators into line. You know, like LBJ famously did, by any means necessary. Thune didn’t do any of that.
In contrast, if Thune wants to maintain the 60-vote threshold, he must resign or be replaced, not because he owes President Donald Trump, the titular head of the Republican Party, but because he owes it to the party’s voters.
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Make no mistake: those voters are heard from, or in the worst case, not even heard of, because they are serving a midterm term, because what difference does it make if nothing can get through the Senate anyway?
Everyone working to promote conservative victories on the ground has been shouting at leaders in Washington, begging them to understand how terrible this betrayal by Thune really is.
Scott Presler, who seems to do little more than eat, sleep and register voters across America, put it this week in an X Post: “With a White House, a Republican House and a Republican Senate, many voters are becoming demoralized by the lack of action – especially on the part of our Senate – to pass legislation.”
Demoralized is exactly the right word, and John Thune’s message to those voters is: “Sorry, but we can’t change the rules we ourselves have made.”
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Although President Trump does not have any authority over leader Thune, nor should he, he is absolutely right when he says that the Democrats are holding together much better than the Republicans. We’ll see that in action when Democrats inevitably kill the filibuster the first chance they get.
Thune is not the leader of the Senate, he is the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate. His job is to get results for Republican voters. If he can’t, someone who can should step in.
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