Republicans pushing back against Donald Trump
Political Suicide or Realism?
Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) made the news nationally by stating the obvious.
“The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency.”
Donald Trump broke from golf (or meeting with his lawyers) to take a swipe at Rounds. Unfortunately for Trump, other Republicans quickly leaned in to back up the South Dakota Republican.
If Trump wants to get even with Rounds for denying the Big Lie — he’ll need to take a break from running for President to do so. Mike Rounds won’t be up for reelection until 2024.
The decision of Rounds to deny the Big Lie has little to do with Trump but has everything to do with Swinged Cat State politics.
South Dakota is a solidy Republican state in presidential elections. The last time it went Democratic in a presidential election was 1964 (it also went Democratic twice for FDR and in 1892 for William Jennings Bryan). It’s also a sparsely populated place spread out over more than 77,000 square miles. As a result, statewide elections tend to be expensive. South Dakota has one of the highest cost per voter in terms of campaign spending. In 2014, Mike Rounds won in a three-way race where the cost per voter was $23.93.
While South Dakoat has voted Democratic on the federal level1, its state politics are Barn Red. There has not been a Republcan governor since the 1970s and the state legislature has gerrymandered the Democrats into a minority that could meet a couple booths in a diner. Winning the Republican primary in South Dakota is like winning the Democratic primary in Hawaii - you win and you’re in.
Trump likes to bully in places where he has a solid base of support, where the GOP primary is functionally the general election, and where he thinks his endorsement will prove his political power. On that last point, Trump has a rather poor record. His endorsements rarely matter and have proven to be ineffective.
The two Republican Senators who have drawn Trump’s ire in recent months are Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota. And that’s the why and where of Trump’s bullying comes — he likes to take on Republicans from states where he is popular.
Neither McConnell nor Thune have been big fans of Trump, the Big Lie, or the January 6th Insurrection. Trump has made it clear the feeling is mutual. He’s advocated replacing McConnell as Minority Leader and recently tried to get Governor Kristi Noem to run for the Senate against Thune in 2022. Noem, who is having a great time making bad policy decions in Pierre (and that’s not just me…that’s the sentiment in the GOP controlled legislature), demurred.
Without a viable Republican to take on John Thune plus a willingness to invest money in a state where swaying 5,000 voters will cost you about $150,000, Trump’s threats of political revenge against Thune and Rounds are meaningless.
John Thune’s announcement that he will seek another term may have rankled Trump, but he has little chance of seeing Thune hounded from office. He’s only lost one race statewide and that was 20 years ago2. In 2004, John Thune beat then Majority Leader Tom Daschle to get elected to the Senate. The margin was razor thin — 4,508 votes. Since then, Thune has enjoyed very comfortable election margins — reelected without any opposition in 2010 and with over 71% in 2016. In his three terms as South Dakota’s congressman, he won with 58%, 75%, and 73%.
Governor Noem’s demurrer to challenging Senator Thune is political realism.
As recently as 2004, South Dakota has two Democratic Senators and had a Democratic Congresswoman in 2016.
In 2002, Thune decided to challenge Democratic SenatorTim Johnson rather than seek relection to his House seat. Thune lost by a mere 524 votes.