OPINION:
The Democrats plan to abolish the legislative filibuster in the Senate is nothing short of tyranny of the majority. Our Founders feared this very scenario.
Senate Democrats are setting up a situation where they can play the victim card as a pretext to triggering the abolition of the filibuster. Dave Boyer reported in The Washington Times on March 10, 2021, “House Democrats are inundating the Senate with a series of partisan bills on issues such as expanding mail-in voting, terminating qualified immunity for police and phasing out fossil fuels, partly in hopes of pressuring holdout Senate Democrats to eliminate the filibuster.” The Democratic strategy is to make people believe the false claim that the Democratic majority can’t get any work done because of Republicans obstructionism.
Democrats failure theater will front load progressive racially charged legislation to be blocked by Republicans. Some progressives have claimed that the “Jim Crow Filibuster” was created to slow civil rights laws, even though the practice existed long before those battles played out in Congress.
The fact remains that Senate Democrats used the filibuster as recently as three years ago to block the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and progressive activists in 2005, including the Center for American Progress and the Alliance for Progress, embraced the filibuster. Now they don’t like and tag it as a tool of racists because it slows their extreme agenda.
Democrats don’t need to abolish the filibuster to implement elements of the progressive agenda. They just used special reconciliation rules to get a $1.9 trillion bill loaded with liberal priorities like $31 billion for Native communities, a Pelosi home-town bailout for $650 million, and $852 million for civic volunteer groups without any Republican support. They also claim to want to bring back the “talking filibuster,” yet anybody who knows the rules of the Senate understands that nothing prevents a majority from considering a bill without filing cloture as a means to force opponents to keep the floor to prevent a vote. Democrats are engaging in a power grab so that they don’t have to listen to any dissent.
The first piece of legislation that Democrats plan to use to trigger a change of Senate rules is the so called “For the People Act of 2021.” The Heritage Foundation describes this bill as an attempt to “federalize and micromanage the election process administered by the states, imposing unnecessary, unwise, and unconstitutional mandates on the states and reversing the decentralization of the American election process—which is essential to the protection of our liberty and freedom.”
The changes that caused so much controversy in the 2020 elections like same-day registration, no-fault absentee ballots intended only for the coronavirus pandemic and changes to IRS policy toward nonprofits that infringe on First Amendment activities are part of this partisan legislation intended to lock in Democratic majorities in the House and Senate for years to come.
The next legislation on deck will be the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, that federalizes the discipline and management of local and state policing. The Democrats will use this bill and the election federalization bill to bully Republicans into submission on the filibuster. The clear implication will be made that Republicans are filibustering these two bills because they are racists.
The truth is that if Democrats are successful in bullying Republicans by playing the race card, they will move on to bullying moderate Democrats to lock down enough votes to abolish or modify the filibuster on a party line vote. Progressives have already started an intimidation campaign against Sens. Joe Manchin, West Virginia Democrat, and Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona Democrat, to get them to comply with changes to the filibuster.
Democrats are expected to claim that the filibuster is unconstitutional then use a party line vote to change from 60 to a simple majority to end debate. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, effectively changed the rule with a vote of Democrats when he had control of the Senate agenda. This tactic is tyrannical because it ignores the written rules of the Senate and uses the brute force of the Democrats slim majority to marginalize Republican and moderate Democratic senators.
For a great example of what Democrats want for all Republicans in the future, look no further than Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, Georgia Republican, who has been stripped of all her committee assignments by Democrats. That is the future of all Republicans if they don’t stand up for themselves and fight against any changes to the filibuster.
• Brian Darling, former counsel and senior communications director for Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, wrote a report on the filibuster for The Heritage Foundation in 2011.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.