Leader Thune Warmly Praises the Insurgent Candidates Who Have Vowed to Remove Him

WASHINGTON — Party leader Thune offered generous praise this week for the insurgent candidates surging within his own ranks, calling them impressive, well-suited to their states, and a welcome source of new energy — several of whom have publicly pledged to deny him the leadership post he is complimenting them from.

Asked directly whether these candidates and their more radical platform truly belonged in the party, Thune performed the practiced maneuver of praising the energy while declining to endorse the direction, a two-step the Press recognizes as the sound of a leader counting votes in his own caucus and not liking the total.

The warmth is strategic. A leader facing a restive base praises the people threatening him precisely because he cannot afford to fight them, a calculation that looks like graciousness from the outside and like self-preservation from the chair.

The Press's leadership desk observes that a party boss embracing the wing that wants him gone is either big-tent statesmanship or a man handing a laurel wreath to his own understudy, depending solely on which party's throne is wobbling, and that the opposition's identical embrace is always weakness dressed as unity.

"They've brought new energy and talent," Thune said of colleagues who have described him, in turn, as the thing they intend to replace.

At press time the leader stood applauding the wing that wants his job, the laurel wreath lay on the pillow, and the banana peel lay, patiently, on the throne.