The Patriot Post® · The Talking Filibuster Won't Save the SAVE Act
President Donald Trump and Republicans writ large want to see the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act passed. And they are right to desire to see this commonsense election-protection legislation become law. Indeed, huge majorities in both parties and among independents agree that requiring voters to show photo ID is a good idea.
The problem is that Democrat lawmakers object to the legislation for one simple reason: it makes it harder for them to cheat.
As President Trump put it in his State of the Union Address, “They want to cheat, they have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat, and we’re going to stop it.”
Of course, Democrats aren’t honest about their opposition to the legislation. They disingenuously label the SAVE Act as “Jim Crow 2.0” — as if their young, public school-educated supporters even know what that is. They claim, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that the bill discriminates against ethnic minority voters and would effectively result in voter suppression. Yet more than three-quarters of black voters support the SAVE Act.
Apparently, Democrats believe that minority voters are too dumb to provide identification, such as a birth certificate, to prove their citizenship and obtain a valid ID.
Despite the SAVE Act’s popularity with the vast majority of Americans, congressional Democrats have decided to dig in and block any chance of the legislation passing the Senate.
The Democrats’ play here appears to be the belief that opposing this commonsense legislation won’t damage them politically. Furthermore, it pressures Republicans to eliminate the filibuster. Even Texas Senator John Cornyn is now calling for ending the filibuster. Tough primaries and looming presidential endorsements have a way of modifying a man’s thinking.
Most Republicans, wisely, don’t want to nuke the filibuster, knowing that doing so will come back to bite them when Democrats inevitably regain majority control of the upper chamber in the future.
Given this reality, Trump and others have called for Senate Majority Leader John Thune to change the current filibuster rule and return it to the old talking filibuster. The theory and hope is that it would force Democrat lawmakers to stage an actual speaking filibuster, eventually leading Democrats to break and allow the legislation to go to the Senate floor for a vote.
Indeed, Trump has essentially thrown down an ultimatum to Thune and Republicans: he will not sign any laws until they pass the SAVE Act.
On top of this, Trump is now pressing for changes to the legislation. He’s calling for the elimination of mail-in ballots and a ban on males in women’s sports. It’s not clear what the latter has to do with safeguarding the nation’s elections, but maybe Trump believes adding another 80-20 issue to the bill would put more pressure on Democrats. Still, it’s difficult to see any of them budging on that issue either.
The trouble is that even if Republicans voted to change the filibuster to a talking filibuster, it would not guarantee they could eventually pass the bill. Furthermore, changing the filibuster rule would also open up the legislation to other Democrat-proposed amendments. In other words, changing the rules may end up damaging Republicans more than Democrats and still may not result in the SAVE Act ever passing.
Thune also observed, “The votes aren’t there, one, to nuke the filibuster, and the votes aren’t there for a talking filibuster. It’s just a reality. I’m the person who has to deliver sometimes the not-so-good news that the math doesn’t add up, but those are the facts, and there’s no getting around it.”
He added that the talking filibuster idea “is much more complicated and risky than people are assuming.”
Republicans’ messaging on this bill needs to be straightforward, clear, and clean: They want to safeguard America’s elections with commonsense voter ID. Democrats, on the other hand, for no good reason, don’t.