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A (Lesser) VILLAIN Election Post Mortum, part II We here at the Consulate are not particular fans of John Thune. If you don't know, he is the current Republican Majority Leader in the US Senate, and is in some disrepute among Republicans for failing to use his authority to bring elements of President Trump's agenda (for example, the SAVE Act) up for a vote. Many have cast this as due to disloyalty to President Trump.It occurs to us, in the aftermath of the midterms, that he may have had a perfectly sensible reason for those delays, not motivated by any sort of disloyalty to his party. Saw It Coming? Pretty much everyone who was paying attention saw the Republican route coming, and we see no reason to believe that Thune didn't. To the extent he foresaw President Trump was leading the party to disaster, as a senior officer of that party, he would have an interest in establishing a visible alternate 'pole' within the party, to be seen as not in full harmony with President Trump. This would give the party a way to retain appeal to those alineated by Trump. And we notice that some other Republicans, most notably Vice President Vance, are suddenly falling all over themselves to distance themselves from various parts of Trump's agenda. So Thune's 'disloyalty', if that is what it is, was merely ahead of the curve.