Thune Clears the Air
Roll Call Staff
Shortly after the news broke last week that Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) had told an audience he would advise Republican candidates to distance themselves from President Bush on the Iraq war, the aspiring freshman began working the Republican Conference to extinguish the flames.
Thune — a rising GOP star who’s eyeing a bid to chair the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2008 cycle — quickly began telling colleagues that his remarks, delivered Wednesday at the National Press Club, had been taken out of context and that he strongly supports Bush’s policy on Iraq as well as Republican efforts to highlight Democratic disunity on national security.
News outlets quoted Thune as saying if he were a candidate in 2006, “you obviously don’t embrace the president and his agenda.”
“The first thing I’d do is acknowledge that there have been mistakes made,” Thune was quoted as saying.
But almost as quickly as those news reports began spreading through the Conference, Thune started reaching out to his fellow Republican Senators to explain that his words had been mischaracterized. He told Senators that the reporters in attendance had honed in on just a few elements of his speech, ignoring the broader substance of the discussion.
“You’ll have to talk to him, but I believe his comments were taken out of context,” said Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). Thune told him that reporters focused “on one little snippet” of his speech, Coleman said.
“He told me his comments were taken out of context,” added Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “Beyond that, I can’t comment on his comments.”
In an interview Friday, Thune said he feels it is important that his colleagues hear directly from him that the published reports were off base. Thune said he “was shocked” by what he read in print, saying his message was that while mistakes have been made, as in any war, Republicans continue to be united behind Bush and that victory is the only option in Iraq.
The comments he made about how much GOP candidates should embrace the president were designed to focus on how some Republicans also may need to tailor their campaigns to match the politics and constituencies of each state or district — to “individualize and localize” their races, he said. But Thune said he also made clear that Republicans have to draw a contrast with their opponents and cannot allow the Democrats to turn the election into a referendum on the president.
Those comments were “in the context of an entire discussion. I thought it was very much a ‘gotcha’ story where they cherry-picked or plucked out some controversy and took it out of context,” Thune said.
While individual Republican candidates may have differences about how they would approach an issue, “the goals and objectives are the same” on key issues such as national security and the economy, Thune said.
“We are on the same page, we have a vision and a goal for where we want to go and what we want to accomplish,” Thune said.
The South Dakota Republican, who gained national attention for his 2004 victory over then-Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D), reiterated Friday that he firmly is behind the president’s war policy and the GOP is “united in purpose, believe the stakes are high and we need to win. Defeat is not an option.”
“I have been conveying that to my colleagues,” Thune said. “I am very much a team player, and that story intimated that I wasn’t. It wasn’t in the context of that interview and the points I was making and the message I was communicating and delivering.”
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