Thune has to wonder about leadership candidacy if Trump is going to run the Senate

It was in December of 2004 that I got an odd phone call from the South Dakota Republican Party. The caller, a young fellow, probably an intern, wanted to thank me for helping his party defeat Tom Daschle.

As a journalist, my personal standard was that I should be registered as an independent. That year, my wife made a modest donation to a Republican candidate. I guess my name was also on the check. I should have given the phone to my wife; instead I got into an argument with the intern.

I assured him I had nothing to do with his party defeating Daschle. I told him in no uncertain terms that I thought voters made a mistake when they sent Daschle home in favor of Thune. My wife made a donation to a specific candidate, I explained. What the party did with it after that was out of my hands. Unschooled in the ways of wooing potential donors, the intern insisted on arguing with me. The phone call did not end well.

(I felt a certain amount of vindication the next year when Ellsworth Air Force Base was targeted for closure, something that never happened while Daschle was the Senate leader of the Democratic Party. Ellsworth was saved from closure by a team effort from Rounds, the newly elected Thune and Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson. Look back at the old news clippings and you’ll see that, happy as they were to keep Ellsworth open, none of them look particularly comfortable being photographed together.)

Now, so many years later, Thune is at the point where he wants to take on the same kind of party leadership role for Republicans that Daschle had for Democrats. He’s been campaigning among his colleagues for some time now, stumping for them during the election and donating generously to their campaigns coffers. At this point, however, he can’t be blamed for asking himself if it was worth the effort.

An election for the Senate leadership of the GOP is set for Wednesday. On Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump said that his administration should be able to make Cabinet and judicial appointments without the approval of the newly Republican-controlled Senate. So much for checks and balances.

Surely Trump would have his way with a Senate that includes a likely 53-member Republican majority. Getting his Cabinet and judicial appointees approved shouldn’t be a problem. That, it seems, is not good enough for our dictator-for-a-day-in-waiting.

As if Trump’s request isn’t weird enough, senators seem to be embracing it. According to a Washington Post story, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, a late entry in the sweepstakes to be the Senate leader for Republicans, enthusiastically embraced the idea. “100% agree,” Scott said right away on X. “I will do whatever it takes to get your nominations through as quickly as possible.”

Trump pressures senators, including Thune, vying to be U.S. Senate GOP leader

Thune wasn’t as enthusiastic, but gave a politician’s measured response to a loony idea that would set aside years of precedent. “One thing is clear,” Thune said, “we must act quickly and decisively to get the president’s Cabinet and other nominees in place as soon as possible to start delivering on the mandate we’ve been sent to execute, and all options are on the table to make that happen, including recess appointments.”

The U.S. Constitution allows presidents to make recess appointments when the Senate is not in session. The Senate, in recent years, has taken to conducting brief, pro-forma sessions. While no business is handled, they meet the standard for staying in session expressly for keeping the president from making recess appointments.

While the majority of its members are in the Republican Party, senators still have a role in the approval of presidential appointments. Give up that role and there may come a day when they wake up to find that Tucker Carlson is the new secretary of state and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the new secretary of health.

Trump was elected to run the executive branch, not the Senate. Thune and his colleagues are the ones who were elected to run the Senate and use that chamber’s traditional role as a check on presidential power. Handing the reins of that chamber to Trump would be a tremendous dereliction of duty.