John Thune Gave the Double Bird to the GOP Base Saturday Morning
Progressive policy ambitions meet practical realities as Americans weigh costs and consequences.
Five in the morning, they confirm an attorney general, and then the first thing on everyone's mind is getting out the door for August recess. That's the sequence that tells you everything about where this Senate majority's priorities actually sit. Todd Blanche gets his vote, fine, that needed to happen.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Sen. John Thune and the rest of the panican GOP caucus wanted to go home. They held a really early-morning vote around 5 AM to confirm Todd Blanche as the 88th attorney general of the United States, but then moved to adjourn.
There weren’t enough senators to kill the August recess. Democrats certainly won’t do it, and Thune noted 15 to 20 Republicans who’d rather let Democrats run them over when they retake the chamber at some point, kill the filibuster, and pass their extreme policies as we watch helplessly like infants.
Why? Well, that’s what these Republicans do: face an open nuclear reactor and think they’ll be rewarded for their bravery when all they do is end up dead.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Five in the morning, they confirm an attorney general, and then the first thing on everyone's mind is getting out the door for August recess. That's the sequence that tells you everything about where this Senate majority's priorities actually sit. Todd Blanche gets his vote, fine, that needed to happen. But the same body that just spent months watching Democrats slow-walk nominations and threaten the filibuster at every turn couldn't be bothered to stick around and use the leverage it has right now, while it still has it.
Thune's defense, that 15 to 20 Republicans wouldn't go along with killing the recess anyway, isn't really a defense. It's an admission. These are members who know exactly what happens when Democrats eventually retake the chamber. The filibuster goes, the guardrails they're so protective of today evaporate overnight, and all that patience and process worship will have bought Republicans nothing but a nice long August. You don't get credit later for playing fair now. You just get run over.
There's a pattern here that base voters have watched for years and it never seems to change. Leadership talks tough about the stakes, then folds the second the vote count gets uncomfortable or the schedule gets inconvenient. Nobody expects the Senate to operate like a battlefield every single week. But when your own majority leader is naming names of members who'd rather coast than fight, you've told the country exactly how seriously to take the next round of promises about holding the line.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.