This commentary was written by Kevin Woster for South Dakota Searchlight, an online news organization.

Even in these deeply troubled political times, you can sometimes see a flicker of hope coming from what former President George H.W. Bush called “a thousand points of light.”

And I think I saw one of those points flicker briefly last week, thanks to John Thune.

Bush used the “points of light” metaphor in his speech accepting the 1988 Republican presidential nomination and again a few months later in his inaugural address. He was referring to the good works of good people across the land and how they brightened the way forward to a better America.

You have to look hard these days to find examples of any points of light in our politics. That’s particularly true in the Republican Party, which is ruled by a man — Donald Trump — who prefers gloomy metaphors like “American carnage” and overwrought predictions of a catastrophic future, unless we put him back in the White House.

So you search for signs of hope where you can in the ailing GOP. Or at least I do. And I found one last week week in the words of South Dakota’s senior U.S. senator while he was discussing trade issues at Dakotafest, an annual agricultural show in Mitchell.

Speaking to reporters following a panel discussion that included Sen. Mike Rounds and Rep. Dusty Johnson, Thune disagreed with Trump on a key point of trade policy.

Let me repeat that: He disagreed with Trump. In public. On something important. That’s an unusual and somewhat perilous move — politically speaking at the least — for a Republican politician these days.

But as reported in a South Dakota Searchlight story by Josh Haiar, Thune said Trump’s recent call for a 10% tariff on all imports and a 60% tariff on Chinese imports was a “recipe for increased inflation.”

While allowing that targeted tariffs can be justified against a nation engaging in unfair trade practices, or “cheating,” as Thune called it, he doesn’t support across-the-board tariffs that Trump recently advocated and seems to like.

No big deal? Maybe not. But disagreeing with Trump is dicey business in the GOP. That’s particularly true at a time when Democrats are on an emotional-sugar high following their national convention in Chicago and polls show Trump, who thought he could cruise to victory in November over a fading Joe Biden, is now in a dead heat with the newly nominated Kamala Harris.

In addition, Thune is the GOP whip in the U.S. Senate and hopes to take the Republican leader’s spot to be vacated by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell at the end of the year. That’s not a sure thing, especially if Trump were to oppose Thune as the new leader.

So why would Thune stick his neck out?

First, he is what Trump never has been: a traditional conservative Republican with a general inclination toward free trade. And he was speaking at a farm show, a gathering of people whose financial lives depend on trade.

But could there be even more than that at work? Could it be that Thune’s honest response reflecting consistent Republican trade policies is also a sign that Donald Trump’s stranglehold on the Party of Lincoln is slipping, just a bit?

That would be a tiny flicker from a point of light, a point of hope, for the Republican Party and for the nation. What if a few more reasonable Republicans decided they could disagree with Trump in public? And a few more after that?

What if there were more and more public points of light — points of reason and decency and dignity — glittering across the party and the nation? Imagine how much better the present would be and the future would look.

Thune is a reasonable conservative by nature. He’s also a gentleman by nature. In other words, nothing like Trump. And while Thune plays plenty of politics as a Republican leader in the Senate, he tends to do it respectfully and will periodically work with Democrats to get things done.

Thune was honored recently for getting things done, in fact, when he received the Titan of Public Service award from the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation, which is named after the late Republican senator from Utah.

The award goes to those who exemplify “the values of service, civility and bipartisanship, which were the hallmarks of Sen. Hatch’s public service,” according to the foundation.

Thune has “demonstrated the ability to get things done for the American people,” the foundation continued. In general, I think that’s true of Thune. Certainly the civility part is true, and the service part. I might not agree with everything he has gotten done, of course, or everything he hasn’t gotten done.

I wish, for example, he had joined all 50 Senate Democrats and seven Republicans in the Senate in voting to convict Donald Trump in the impeachment trial following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on our nation’s Capitol, an attack that Trump inspired in his effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Trump was impeached by the House, and a trial in the Senate followed. Had he been convicted, Trump would have been barred from future public office, which would have opened the door for a different and surely more suitable GOP presidential nominee this year.

I was also deeply disappointed five years earlier when Thune joined McConnell and other Republicans — including Hatch — in refusing even to consider the well-qualified Merrick Garland for the U.S. Supreme Court. President Barack Obama nominated Garland, now the U.S. attorney general, in March of 2016 to fill the seat of Justice Antonin Scalia, who had died that February.

The excuses O’Connell, Thune and other Republicans, who controlled the Senate, came up with were both political and ludicrous. In a weak attempt at justification, Thune said at the time that the March nomination by Obama came too close to the November election:

“The American people deserve to have their voices heard on the nomination of the next Supreme Court justice, who could fundamentally alter the direction of the Supreme Court for a generation. Since the next presidential election is already underway, the next president should make this lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.”

Well, while the next presidential campaign was underway, Election Day was still months away. Besides, the American people had already made their voices heard when they elected Barack Obama as president for a second term in 2012. Eight months before the general election in 2016, Obama had the right to offer a nomination and the Senate had the obligation to consider it, with hearings and votes.

Because of the Republican power play, Donald Trump made the appointment on Jan. 31, 2017, almost a year after Scalia died.

So, there are a couple of smudges on that Titan of Public Service Award for John Thune. But there also are other ways in which it is deserved.

Thune can add to those ways by continuing to speak truth to the power of Trump when truth is called for, and perhaps embolden other Republicans to do the same.

Who knows how many points of light that could create, or what they could mean to the future of our country.