Is There a Word that Combines "Hypocrisy" with "Chutzpah?"
Once a great defender and protector of the Senate's filibuster, Charles Schumer now wants to "reform" it to jam through his progressive agenda. Americans aren't amused.
Let’s start with a guessing game. Who said the following about proposals to end the US Senate’s filibuster, a topic du jour in your nation’s capital:
“The bottom line is very simple. The ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the founding fathers called the cooling saucer of democracy into the rubber stamp of dictatorship. We will not let them. They want - because they can’t get their way on every judge - to change the rules in mid-stream, to wash away 200 years of history. They want to make this country into a banana republic, where if you don’t get your way, you change the rules. Are we going to let them? It’ll be a doomsday for democracy if we do.”
I’ll spare you the time.
That would be the current Senate Majority Leader, one Charles “Chuckles” Schumer (D-Banana Republic), speaking in 2005 when Republicans were toying with - and backed away from - implementing the so-called “nuclear option” to expedite the confirmation of federal judges. You know, the same nuclear option that Schumer’s predecessor, the late Harry Reid, implemented in November 2013. It was invoked a second time for Supreme Court nominees by then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2017, much to Schumer’s then-chagrin. Unlike Reid, McConnell did not act without precedent.
What a difference four years make. Schumer, in a memo to his Democratic colleagues:
“The Senate was designed to protect the political rights of the minority in the chamber, through the promise of debate and the opportunity to amend. But over the years, those rights have been warped and contorted to obstruct and embarrass the will of majority – something our Founders explicitly opposed. The constitution specified what measures demanded a supermajority – including impeachment or the ratification of treaties. But they explicitly rejected supermajority requirements for legislation, having learned firsthand of such a requirement’s defects under the Articles of Confederation. The weaponization of rules once meant to short-circuit obstruction have been hijacked to guarantee obstruction.”
Those same founders also wrote Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution that gives the House and Senate the right to establish their own rules of procedure. And the Senate’s rules include supermajority requirements to change procedure and end debate.
Is there a word that combines “hypocrisy” with “chutzpah?”
Here’s your reminder of the “nuclear option:” It is a parliamentary maneuver by which a Senator moves to overturn a ruling of the chair, which can be accomplished with a simple majority of 51 votes. Don’t like the chair’s interpretation of a rule requiring 60 votes to end debate on a judicial nomination? Fine, overrule the chair if you have the votes. It is both an ingenious and devious way to overcome a requirement for a two-thirds vote to change the standing rules of the US Senate (Rule XXII).
Now, Schumer wants “filibuster reform” to pass a likely unconstitutional federal takeover of elections. Known as HR 4 (its Senate companion is S.4, which failed to overcome a filibuster just two months ago), the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would reinstate the concept of federal “pre-clearance” of elections. That was deemed unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court just nine years ago. It passed the House by seven votes on a purely partisan basis last August. An ostensibly revised version orchestrated by Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) enjoys the support of one GOP Senator, Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). That is still well short of 60 votes needed under the rules to invoke cloture to force a final vote.
One especially bad idea is to eliminate the filibuster just for this bill alone. Fortunately, that idea seems to have died, but stay tuned.
Why are they so intent on pushing this bill? Because some 20 states, led by Georgia, have passed voter integrity laws that they don’t like. This is odd because Georgia’s new law makes voting more accessible than Schumer’s New York or Joe Biden’s Delaware. For example, until 2022, Delaware has never allowed early in-person voting. Georgia’s new law provides for 17 days of early voting, compared to New York’s 10. But their real agenda is to weaponize an increasingly partisan federal Department of Justice impose preferred Democratic voting “rules” on red states.
Schumer’s big problem is that he’s a couple of Democratic Senators short of 51 votes needed to pull a final “nuclear option” under current rules for his dreams of a rubber stamp of dictatorship a banana republic doomsday for democracy moving his progressive agenda. Those would be Senators Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and, of course, Manchin.
Schumer has another problem: Public opinion. The latest polling suggests both Democrats and Republicans oppose changes to the Senate’s filibuster rules.
To be fair, Republicans aren’t pure on the issue of filibuster reform, either. Donald Trump pressured Senator McConnell to eliminate the filibuster to jam through his agenda, particularly ending Obamacare. McConnell, to his credit, resisted. He reminds Democrats of that at every opportunity.
In January 2017, the ever-thoughtful US Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) spoke to Hillsdale University’s Kirby Center. In a speech later published in Imprimis, McClintock opined on the need for filibuster reform in a dysfunctional Senate. His suggestions would be worth considering in calmer, more bipartisan times, along with those by friend Mark Strand at the Congressional Institute. But unlike Schumer, neither came very close to calling for an end to a supermajority requirement to end debate.
Manchin has proposed some very modest changes, including changing the firm 60 vote threshold to three-fifths of Senators present and voting. As some Republicans have suggested, he favors eliminating the filibuster on a motion to proceed to a bill. But that still would not change a super-majority requirement to end debate and vote on final passage.
But those won’t satisfy Schumer or his progressive colleagues. And Democratic Senate candidates in states like Pennsylvania are now campaigning to eliminate the filibuster.
That is ultimately a losing issue for Democrats, and pretty much a non-issue for voters more concerned about the economy, COVID, inflation, crime, and our southern border. But it might get you some support from a few progressive Democrats in a crowded primary.
The real problem here isn’t the filibuster. It is the insistence of hard-left progressive Democrats to jam through their agenda with no serious effort at bipartisan accommodation. As Schumer noted in 2007, the Senate is the “cooling saucer of democracy.” At least it was. If Schumer was a truly institutional Senate Majority Leader - he’s not - he would endeavor to find enough Republicans for sensible filibuster reforms. But he’s poisoned the waterhole.
Please, Senator Schumer, a little more Woody and a lot less Sid.
The Senate’s organizational purpose, aside from protecting and representing the interests of States, is to protect the nation from the whims of majoritarian impulses. Turning the Senate into a smaller but no less vitriolic version of the House may not be “doomsday for democracy,” but it would undoubtedly be doomsday for the US Senate.