The Republican Party in the US Senate elected John Thune as its new leader in a secret vote this Wednesday. Thune will replace the head of the party, which in the November 5 elections obtained a comfortable majority of 53 seats compared to 47 for the Democrats, Mitch McConnell, its boss since 2006, a man whose style has marked Washington politics in the last decades. With the election of the senator from South Dakota, who was McConnell’s second, the party sends a message to Donald Trump: the absolute loyalty that the president expected from the Upper House is not guaranteed.
The president-elect’s entourage, with Elon Musk at the helm, had opted for another candidate, Rick Scott, senator from Florida and politician aligned with the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. Trump had not opted for any of the three options (the fight was completed by John Cornyn, from Texas), but he had made clear over the weekend on social networks what he expected from the new parliamentary leader: that he would be willing to allow the voting “in recess” of the appointments of his Cabinet in full formation. The new tenant of the White House is in a hurry to begin his work of dismantling the policies of the Biden Administration and has the process of approving his signings in the Senate, a tradition that he respected in his first presidency, but that is predecessors such as Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush skipped. Without that shortcut, the process of these appointments can take months or years. “We need the positions filled IMMEDIATELY!” Trump wrote on Truth, his social network, with his usual emphatic use of capital letters.
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Scott, who had announced that he would have no problem complying with the chief’s wishes, fell on the first vote. In the second and final vote, Cornyn obtained 24 supports, compared to the 29 that Thune garnered, who has avoided publicly confirming whether or not he plans to bow to the new president’s haste. Trump also needs it to push forward the most controversial points of a government program that includes a mass deportation of millions of people, a drastic thinning of the structure of agencies and decisions with potentially disastrous effects on climate.
Aid to Ukraine, key
Thune represents a certain continuity with the legacy of McConnell, who became an enemy of Trump, when he criticized the president for his role in instigating the assault on the Capitol in the days following the insurrection of January 6, 2021. Afterwards, McConnell decided to vote against impeachment (impeachment trial) to which Trump was subjected for his involvement in those events. The new majority leader has clashed with Trump in the past, but has also grown strategically closer in recent months to the president-elect. In the closed-door meeting in which he was elected in a Capitol that this Wednesday saw frenetic activity after weeks of rest for the elections, Thune promised senators that he would work closely with the new Administration, even on issues where he differs with Trump, such as helping Ukraine in its defense from Russian aggression.
The new majority leader also has the mission of carrying out radical tax cuts, appointing conservative judges and officials of the Trump Administration. Republican votes will also be used to approve budgets, foreign aid and the always controversial debt ceiling.
Trump’s long shadow was more than just a commonplace this Wednesday at the Capitol. Before meeting at the White House with his predecessor (and successor), Joe Biden, to discuss issues of the transfer of power between the two, the president-elect was seen in the building whose followers attacked in 2021 with members of his party in the House of Representatives, to whom he addressed a few words of gratitude. The Republicans are close to the majority in the lower house as well, but they are still, eight days after the polls closed, waiting for the scrutiny in California to end. This Wednesday they were two seats away from consolidating a majority that they obtained in the 2022 legislative elections.
Thune’s election is also a blow to Elon Musk’s growing authority in Washington. The businessman, who in recent weeks has become the man with the greatest influence on Trump, who on Tuesday named him co-director of something called the Department of Government Effectiveness, made his preference clear this Sunday on X, the social network of which he is the owner: “ “Rick Scott, for Senate Majority Leader!” he tweeted. The billionaire set up a survey among his followers in which Scott won. In addition, he launched a withering message against the most prominent rival for the position: “Senator Thune is the Democrats’ main option.” But this time, the richest man in the world didn’t get his way.
