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To outsiders, it appears that Donald Trump has unparalleled control over today’s Republican Party. He rode a remarkable and ahistorical wave back to re-election last week, a wave in which his allies expanded their majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate returns in January with Republicans in control. To laypeople, Trump and his Republican lackeys will have free reign of Washington for the next two years. Democrats, it’s best to just cower and cede ground, right?

But look a little closer, and the Republican monopoly is a little less secure. The House of Representatives is destined to be a mess, given its narrow majority margin and the parochial whims of some of its most right-wing members. Republicans are expected to need a handful of Democratic votes on most measures to get necessary pieces of legislation across the finish line, and that will mean at least some trimming of conservative wish lists. In the Senate, the surviving filibuster requires a 60-vote suspension on most measures, with another handful of Democratic votes needed to pass major pieces into law. Simply put, Trump would never get a blank check from his friends in Congress.

That check became even less blank on Wednesday, when Senate Republicans chose their successor to Mitch McConnell, who ends a record 18 years as party leader. In his place, Republican lawmakers have elevated Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, who in recent years has been a vigilant student of McConnell’s control of the Senate and its idiosyncrasies. Thune, also an industrialist, defeated colleagues John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida for the job on the second ballot, and Cornyn suggested the decision be made unanimously.

“We are excited to regain the majority and work with our colleagues in the House of Representatives to implement President Trump’s agenda,” Thune said after the election.

Careful words, certainly. But total honesty? Not quite.

In choosing Thune, Republicans rejected the MAGA-backed Scott as a by-the-book figure who is as modest as he is efficient. Thune is one of the most powerful people in Washington that people outside the Beltway have never heard of. He has a national fundraising network — raising $33 million for Republicans this cycle alone — and his alumni are spread across the conservative ecosystem of Hill offices, committee staffs and K Street lobbying shops. To put it plainly, Thune cleverly positioned himself to become McConnell’s logical heir.

And that is exactly why President-elect Donald Trump must insist. Trump has made his disdain for “business as usual” policies in Washington part of the deal. Trump famously hated McConnell and his insistence that precedent and decorum prevail, not haste or instinct. Thune is a little more instinctive, but he is a gentleman who rightly matches the sedate reputation of the Senate. After Trump sent a mob to attack the House on January 6, 2021, Thune broke with him widely that day. Four years earlier, Thune was among Republicans who called on Trump to resign in the wake of the election Access to Hollywood crisis that ultimately turned out to be irrelevant to the race. While Trump was president, Thune was a staunch critic of Trump’s obsession with tariffs.

Although this was a secret ballot, unlike votes in the Senate, the fact that House Republicans sided with Thune is an early — and perhaps premature — warning that they might not be the rubber stamp that House Republicans Trump had hoped to find. Thune politely nodded along when Trump demanded that the House give him recess appointments for his Cabinet if the confirmation hearings took too long, but Thune was careful to add that his legions would work toward a quick vetting — not a unilateral green light for his choices.

That caution and calibration are why Trump has long harbored suspicions of Thune. The antipathy was so deep that Trump actively sought Kristi Noem as a primary challenger to Thune in 2022, though she instead ran for re-election and is now on deck to be his nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security . Thune is a normie in the purest sense of the word, and his colleagues decided they trusted him over Cornyn — another mainstream conservative — or burned-out billionaire Scott, to dictate which measures move to the Senate and which go to the bottom of a political crisis are buried. desk drawer.

Thune’s victory is also a signal that Trump and his inner circle — particularly billionaire Elon Musk — will not have full control of DC. Musk had openly supported Scott for the action, and many in Trump’s inner circle had retold their stories of how Thune was perceived. as a disloyal supporter of the MAGA movement. But in the secret ballot, Thune prevailed as the level-headed, outspoken grandfather who could keep the deliberately inert Senate stable. Now that Trump is likely to have his sycophants in the House of Representatives ready to give his impulses a green order, and the courts have been reconfigured to his — and McConnell’s — liking, the Senate could be the fail-safe link in the government . The dam may still break, but for now it will hold. It could be the best those in Washington who fear Trump 2.0 can hope for in the coming years.

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