Talk about desperate …� GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas caved to right-wing activists’ demands Wednesday, saying that he now supports nuking
Emily Singer at Daily Kos:
Talk about desperate … GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas caved to right-wing activists’ demands Wednesday, saying that he now supports nuking the filibuster to pass President Donald Trump's voter suppression bill. Cornyn’s newfound support for axing the filibuster is a complete about-face from his past position on Senate procedure, and it amounts to a naked attempt to secure Trump's endorsement in his existential runoff. “After careful consideration, I support whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary for us to get the SAVE America Act and homeland security funding past the Democrats’ obstruction, through the Senate, and on the president’s desk for his signature,” Cornyn wrote in an op-ed for the New York Post. For years, Cornyn extolled the virtues of the filibuster, saying that eliminating the arcane procedure—which requires 60 senators to advance bills to a vote—would eventually blow back on Republicans when Democrats regained power. "Power is fleeting, and at some point the shoe will always be on the other foot," Cornyn said in January 2022, when Democrats were trying to pass a voting rights bill. "Liberal activists may like the idea of nuking the filibuster today, but they'll soon find themselves ruing the day their party broke the Senate." Also that month, Cornyn slammed Democrats for considering eliminating the filibuster to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
“Not only are our colleagues trying to seize the authority given under the Constitution to the states to manage their own elections, they’re willing to take a wrecking ball to the United States Senate itself and, particularly, the Senate rules,” he said in a statement. But Trump is hellbent on passing the SAVE Act—which would force Americans to show a passport or birth certificate when registering to vote, require ID at the polls, and demand that states run voter registration records through an error-ridden database to keep noncitizens from voting. The bill has nowhere near the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster in the Senate, and thus is expected to fail.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), in a desperate bid to fend off AG Ken Paxton in the Senate runoff, wrote an op-ed in the New York Post reversing his longtime support for the filibuster just to get the SAVE America Act passed in a bid to win Trump’s blessing for the endorsement.
