Scoreboard: Thune 1, Liberals 0

John Thune, who dethroned the detached Senate Democrat leader Tom Daschle in the South Dakota Senate race last year, has been ridiculed in the press lately, even by conservative columnist Bob Novak. Why? Because South Dakota's Ellsworth Air Force Base was on the Pentagon's list to be closed.

Yessiree, the libs were getting as giddy as a bunch of NOW members watching a k.d. lang concert held at Lickensplit's Sushi House at the thought of Thune suffering such an embarrassment. They had pretty much already counted his Senate seat falling back into Democrat hands in 2010.

Well, while no one knows what the rest of Thune's Senate term will hold, we do know this: he pulled off a huge win in this, his first year as South Dakota Senator. Ellsworth will not be closing! The BRAC commission rejected the Pentagon's recommendation for that base's closure.

When he told South Dakota that he had the ear of the important people in D.C., he obviously wasn't kidding. Thune defeated Dasshole in part because he claimed that he would be better positioned to help save the base (since no one in the Bush administration liked Dasshole at all, rendering Little Tommy politically neutered)...and in part because South Dakota is a conservative state and Dasshole was a D.C. liberal leopard who tried to hide his spots. It didn't work. But I digress...