Not Another Maverick (Thune coming back to bite * in the arse?!)

[icymist]

June 07, 2005, 7:48 a.m.
Not Another Maverick
The White House should make a move for Thune.


http://nationalreview.com/comment/newman200506070748.asp
By R. Andrew Newman

As a game of political chicken shapes up between freshman U.S. Sen. John Thune and the White House, the biggest casualty could be President Bush’s agenda. With strong backing from the national GOP and the president, Thune defeated Tom Daschle, the Democrat’s number-one man in the Senate, in a race that saw South Dakota become one of the nation’s most contentious political battlegrounds.

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Not one year from the election, Thune finds himself in the worst position he could imagine. Those friendly ties didn’t stay the Pentagon’s hand, and Ellsworth has been marked for closure. Democrats are saying that the Thune couldn’t deliver the goods when it mattered.


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Politics is about more than helping friends, but without friends, battles can’t be won and principles can’t be defended. An angry Thune has reversed course and said he’ll vote against John Bolton’s nomination as U.N. ambassador. Bolton’s vote was already going to be close, and it’s one the White House can’t afford to lose, given that, for better or worse, it has now been styled a referendum on the president’s foreign policy. Thune has also refrained from showing his hand on another major component of Bush’s second term agenda, the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Thune need only look one state south to see Chuck Hagel, proof that a Republican senator can buck party and president and face no consequences. The maverick club isn’t so exclusive that it wouldn’t make room for another member, especially a bright newcomer fresh from a public falling-out with the president.