Commenter “HC68” wrote this (the first sentence is a quote from me):

I have never been able to understand the thought processes that would lead someone to stay home to punish those who are generally on that person’s side and enable those who want to destroy whatever policy that person is advocating.

— neo

Not to defend them, I 99% agree with everything you said, but I do see a human nature basis for it.

Why punish someone who is 75% on your side and in so doing reward somebody totally against you?

Imagine Joe Smith. He’s married to Jane Smith. Joe has an enemy named Darla Jones who has spent decades making his life harder.

Jane Smith has a brief affair on a business trip and Joe finds out and divorces her. He spends a great deal of time and effort to do as much damage to her as he can in the divorce proceedings, trying to get the kids, the cars, the dog, and the house, and gets a lot of it. He and his lawyer manage to really mess Jane over.

A bystanders asks Joe: “Joe, Jane was faithful and loving to you for years, she only cheated once. But you spent ten times as much energy sticking it to her as you ever did to Darla. Why?”

Well, most of us understand why Joe would do that, though we might or might not agree that it was wise or best.

Because of the sense of betrayal.

I think, in a more generalized, irrational level, that this same impulse drives people to be harsher to ‘their own side’ over disagreement. I don’t think it’s the only reason or even necessarily the main reason, but I think it’s in play.

Broken human nature again.

HC68 makes a good point. However, a spouse having an affair is of a different category than politics; it is personal and almost inevitably highly emotional and hits right in the gut. If people feel towards their elected representatives the way they feel about their spouses, they will be perpetually angry because not getting what you want is pretty inevitable in politics.

What’s more, if you react with that intensity of feeling at not getting what you want, don’t say you’re acting on logic and not on emotion unless it’s crystal clear someone has lied to you and betrayed you purposely, rather than merely been unable to achieve the desired result.

Take the hatred of Thune on the right; it’s been going on for quite some time, and a great deal of it centers on his handling of the SAVE Act although it’s hardly limited to it. I’ve written many times before about the SAVE Act. I’m not at all sure that most people who are so very critical of Thune and the entire GOP on this actually remember the progression of events and who on the GOP side voted against it, or how much it actually could have accomplished.

For example, see this post of mine. An excerpt:

The online chatter is that the GOP doesn’t want to pass it. I think it’s much more accurate to say that a certain minority of them don’t, but they hold a lot of power because of the tiny margin the GOP has in terms of numbers.

But I am convinced that – although I strongly support the bill – people are exaggerating what it would accomplish in this election cycle, if passed. There would be immediate court challenges that would probably tie it up so that it couldn’t be implemented prior to the 2026 election. …

I think the whole thing hinges on 2028, not now. And yet everyone is so fired up about this that a failure to pass it could have the result of many voters on the right punishing the GOP in the midterms. That would be a real self-own, IMHO.

I made that prediction last March. And it certainly turned out to be a big element on the 2026 election debacle.

I’d like you to take a look at this, too. When Thune brought the SAVE Act up for a vote (I think the last time he tried, although I’m not sure), four Republicans voted against it. Do you recall that, and who they were? Here are the four: Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Mitch McConnell (R-KY). No real surprises there. The Senate’s GOP majority was small, which made it possible for the four to sabotage what I believe the rest for of the GOP senators actually wanted to pass. This has often been the case with the GOP (starting with the FDR years), which has tended either to not have a majority or to have a small one.

So why is Thune to blame for not passing the SAVE Act? Perhaps he ought to have somehow twisted their arms more forcibly. Would that have worked? Also, many people assume that the Democrats would have managed to twist holdout Democrats’ arms had they been in that position. I’m not at all sure that’s these particular four would have changed their minds no matter how much their arms were twisted. Nor did the Democrats accomplish what they wanted when Sinema and Manchin were in the Senate and the Democrat majority was small; they managed to block the Democrats’ strong desire to nuke the filibuster, to pass their own voting “reform” act, to pack the Court, and to add a few solidly blue states.

It’s not that I love Thune and think he’s done great things; not at all. But I don’t think he could have worked that miracle and I don’t know who could have. Plus, there’s something else: not a lot of people want the job of Majority Leader. It’s a somewhat thankless task because you don’t get much credit ordinarily for what does pass, but you get a lot of blame for what doesn’t. Back when he ran for Leader in 2024, who opposed him? Why, Cronyn of Texas and Rick Scott. They didn’t have the votes to win, but had either done so, would he have done better? I very much doubt it.

More on Thune and the SAVE act, from Google AI:

Senate Majority Leader John Thune did allow votes on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, with the Senate voting on the legislation multiple times (including at least five to six separate votes), though the bill failed to advance because it did not reach the 60 votes required to overcome the legislative filibuster.
Key details regarding Thune and the SAVE Act include:
• Multiple Votes Held: John Thune permitted floor votes and debate on the SAVE Act, noting that the measure was the pending business on the Senate floor for over two weeks and voted on six times.
• Lack of Democratic Support: All 47 Senate Democrats voted against the legislation each time, and Republicans did not have the 60 votes necessary to pass it or the votes to eliminate the legislative filibuster.

Do you think it was all theater and someone like Collins would have voted for it but Thune didn’t actually want her to? I certainly don’t think so.

The real remedy for all of this would be to have voted for more Republicans in 2026 and to have a larger margin in the Senate, and then you wouldn’t need Collins or Murkowski. I often think some portion of the “uniparty” accusers who purport to be on the right, and the ones who scream “betrayal,” are Democrat operatives – because of course voter apathy will harm the GOP and help the Democrats. Duh.

And yes, they re-elected Thune as Minority Leader this time. I keep reading what a betrayal that is, how awful, how it proves the GOP senators don’t want to accomplish anything. But perhaps the job of Minority Leader is a thankless one and no one else wanted it; Thune ran unopposed.

NOTE: I fully expect many people to disagree with me on this.