In the world of Democrats, the Republicans in the Senate are more-or-less completely written off. Mitch McConnell has them all in line, it is assumed, behind the strategy to obstruct, obstruct, obstruct.
Meanwhile, the Democrats need every single Democratic senator to act with unanimity (with the VP to break the tie) to accomplish anything. And even that isn’t enough for a whole host of matters that can be filibustered. To achieve any of those, would require the help of 10 Republicans. And there are not 10 Republicans who would help with almost anything.
Except if the Senate were to change the rules regarding the filibuster— like doing a “carve-out” in the filibuster rules to expand the range of what can be passed with a simple majority vote.
Except that among the 50 Democrats — as everyone knows — there are two (Manchin and Sinema) whose cooperation in getting done what so urgently needs to get done is uncertain. Especially Krysten Sinema: because her motives are so weirdly unclear, her eventual decision — whether to cooperate to achieve the necessary, or to secure a place in history for herself as the person who blew everything up — is likewise unclear.
Everybody here, I expect, knows all that. But what I’ve not heard raised in discussion is the possibility that if Sinema defects from the Democrats, there might be a Republican who would defect from the Republican obstructionism for at least the one most crucial purpose: i.e. to defend American democracy.
The issue: the protection of voting rights, and of the integrity of our national elections, which are under systematic assault from Republican state legislatures in many of the states the GOP controls.
The step to take: vote for a change in the filibuster rule so that measures for the protection of voting rights — or more broadly, for the protection of our constitutional democracy — cannot be filibustered.
The possible pitch to the Republicans: “We have all taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. It is under assault in these voter-suppression measures. Therefore we are all obligated by our oath of office to do what we can to change the filibuster rule in order to pass the voter-protection measures that are required to defend our constitutional order from these attempts to institute minority rule.”
The potential decent Republican: Mitt Romney, whose impeachment vote, and accompanying statements, showed a degree of integrity of the kind that seems bizarrely scarce in the Republican Party of our times.
Romney has been such a mixture of flashes of integrity combined with more consistent complicity with the indefensible. But there may be a difference between where he is on policy— he’s a conservative from Utah (no longer Governor of Massachusetts — and where he is on matters of basic American tradition and patriotism.
(“When he voted to impeach Trump earlier this year, Romney said: “I swore an oath, before God, to exercise “impartial justice.” I am a profoundly religious person. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential. I knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the President, the leader of my own party, would be the most difficult decision I have ever faced.” But he did what his oath required.”)
I wish I could say that there is a second Republican I can envision taking that step— just in case Manchin as well as Sinema continue with their nonsensical position in which the filibuster (a mere Senate rule) is more important than the future of American democracy. But if Romney is uncertain, all the others seem implausible. (Maybe Murkowski?)
Anyway, there’s so much at stake, and the ability of the Democrats to hold all 50 together is so up in the air, it seems important to consider a plan B in case Democratic unanimity cannot be achieved.