Sen. John Thune, of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, made headlines last week for dissing the GOP attempt to overthrow te election on Jan. 6, saying it will “go down like a shot dog.”
Almost immediately, Trump called on South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, an extremist in every respect — or somebody, anybody, doesn’t matter who — to primary Thune when he runs for re-election in 2022.
What Thune did to infuriate Trump, CNN says (read story here), “is publicly acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. ‘I understand there are people who feel strongly about the outcome of this election, but in the end, at some point, you have to face the music,’ Thune told the New York Times last month.”
Of the rapidly expanding GOP effort to overturn the election in Congress on January 6, which now includes at least 140 Republican congressmen and a dozen or more Republican senators, Thune said, “I think the thing they got to remember is, it’s not going anywhere … in the Senate, it would go down like a shot dog. I just don’t think it makes a lot of sense to put everybody through this when you know what the ultimate outcome is going to be.” (Emphasis mine.)
Note what Thune did not say: It’s wrong, undemocratic, and violates the rights of the voters whose votes would be disregarded. Make no mistake, he’s not defending democracy or your right to choose our president. All he said was that installing a corrupt, dishonest demagogue in America’s most powerful public office in opposition to the will of the American people doesn’t serve his party’s interests because they don’t have the votes to make it stick.
That doesn’t deserve praise.
Photo: Sen. John Thune (R-SD), just another run-of-the-mill Trumper with no respect for democracy or your vote
Every Senator in the US Senate, and every Representative put their hand up and promise to defend the constitution. That means defending the electoral college. If Thune opinion is that the electors have voted and their choice applies., It is still an undemocratic process. It usually has worked pretty well, but all the folks we vote into Congress support an undemocratic process that always violates rights of some voters and disregards millions of votes. Made worse by the fact the House is supposed to add members every 10 years or so to reflect a growing population or lose members if the population were to decline sufficiently. It would be nice if Senator Thune and other Senators were to have a discussion on r3pealing the unconstitutional law that holds the house at 435 members. That more than anything else allows for much of the silliness we are seeing these past few Presidential elections. Perhaps the founders had a good idea when they thought states legislators should choose Senators. At least then the Senators chosen by states might be crooked at least they are a particulars states crooked Senator.
As it is the Senate is in for several hours of debate where politically if the Republicans maintain control several states slate of electors should be tossed or some kind of Congressional board should be formed to advise Congress who is the and Vice President. Maybe the Republicans would be fine with Biden just toss out that whole Social Security, education and health care from the Federal government. Biden being a closet Republican might go for that and become President.
At ;east the issue is in th4e correct body of government which is Congress and the real reason Federal Court Judges have been unwilling to touch the various cases with a ten foot pole.
I think Senator Thune will vote with his constituents in mind, and may vote yes as he does not care to be primaried as voting in support of Biden would be political suicide.
The Founding Fathers settled on state legislatures choosing senators when the U.S. had a population of 4 million, women and slaves couldn’t vote, typical life expectancy was 38 years, people traveled by horse and buggy or on foot, there was no mass media, we didn’t have nuclear weapons pointed at us or a $750 billion defense budget, and the United States consisted of 13 former colonies and the Senate had 26 members. To suggest we should do things the same way they did them in 1781, irrespective of all the changes that have taken place since then, is intellectually lazy; you just aren’t thinking. As for Biden, he will get 306 electoral votes on Wednesday, despite the herculean efforts of Republican revolutionaries to overthrow our democracy and violate the basic rights of the 81 million voters who elected him, and he will be inaugurated on January 20. Why aren’t you outraged by the GOP’s un-American, anti-democratic shenanigans?
The Republican party is split into two factions the normal reasonable, responsible Republicans and then there are the faction of the alt-right radical Neo-Nazis, who want to destroy our government and our country.