Sen. McConnell, Who Spent Years Trying to Weaken the Filibuster, Now Says the Filibuster Is Sacred
The rule he called an obstacle to democracy when he held the majority has become, in the minority, a cornerstone of the Republic — a conversion shared, in reverse, by everyone across the aisle
Ink = the flip (fiction). Red = real Republican · Blue = real Democrat.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Schumer, who as majority leader worked to sidestep the filibuster and denounced it as a relic obstructing the will of the people, has rediscovered, now that his party is losing its grip on the chamber, that the filibuster is in fact a vital safeguard, a cornerstone of the Senate, and a bulwark against tyranny.
The senator was joined in the epiphany by several colleagues who had spent recent years demanding the rule's abolition and who this week urged their caucus to deploy it against a spending bill. A former member of the chamber, watching the reversal, accused them of a flip-flop performed 'now that they need it,' which The Press notes is the only condition under which anyone in the Senate has ever needed the filibuster.
The Press's rules desk maintains, as a permanent standing item, that every senator supports the filibuster in the minority and opposes it in the majority, and that the switch is thrown not by conviction but by the previous election. The rule is described as sacred by whoever is currently losing and as anti-democratic by whoever is currently winning, and the two descriptions change places on a schedule set entirely by the voters.
Colleagues defended the reversal as principled restraint against an overreaching majority, the identical argument the other party made the last time the chairs were arranged the other way, and will make again the next time they are rearranged. No principle in Washington has traveled across the aisle more times, or with less luggage.
Reaction followed the standing choreography. Allies heard a leader defending the rights of the minority against a steamroller; opponents heard a man clutching the very weapon he spent years trying to melt down. The Press archives confirm both parties own the vocabulary — 'protecting the minority' and 'cynical obstruction' — and swap it, at the cloture vote, whenever the other side is the one holding the gavel.
The lever, reached for comment, had been thrown so many times it no longer remembered which way was reform.
📜 The Receipts
What actually happened: Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and Republicans including Majority Leader John Thune accused Senate Democrats — among them Chuck Schumer and progressives such as Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Jayapal and Khanna — of a filibuster flip-flop for urging its use against a spending bill after years of calling to abolish it. Schumer argued against ending the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in 2017 but as majority leader in 2022 sought to sidestep it to pass a voting-rights bill.