In respect of the filibuster, Senator Mitch McConnell certainly put the hay down where us mules can get to it. The Republican leader unloaded after a hapless Ben Cardin, senator of Maryland, while talking on Monday with Transportation Secretary Buttigieg, “accidentally” got caught by a hot-mic and, as the New York Post retailed the story, “outed plans to pass an infrastructure bill without Republican votes.”
Mr. McConnell responded today with a prediction of the kind rarely heard in the upper chamber. “Let me say this very clearly, for all 99 of my colleagues,” the Kentuckian rasped. “Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin — can even begin — to imagine what a completely scorched earth Senate would look like. None of us has even served one minute in a Senate that was completely drained of comity and consent.”
The Republican marked that Senator Chuck Schumer, fewer than four years ago, had called the legislative filibuster “the most important distinction between the Senate and the House” and had suggested that without the 60-vote threshold for legislation, the Senate “becomes a majoritarian institution like the House, much more subject to the winds of short-term electoral change. No Senator would like to see that happen.”
Behold the awesome firepower of a fully-operational Cocaine Mitch: “He promised that a Republican majority would immediately defund Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities, push abortion restrictions, ramp up security on the southern border and more.”