By trying to radically change the Senate’s rules because he doesn't have the votes, Chuck Schumer is doing his best to win the award for biggest hypocrite in Washington, D.C., and that’s saying something.
We have the receipts: In 2005, Schumer said eliminating the filibuster would “make this country into a banana republic, where if you don’t get your way, you change the rules. Are we gonna let them? It will be a doomsday for Democracy if we do.”
In 2017 Schumer’s mantra was if you can’t “get 60 votes, you shouldn't change the rules,” and said circumventing the filibuster is “acting like you know they’re a cat on the top of a tree and they have to jump off with all the damage that entails.” And that was when he was blocking a nominee with bipartisan support.
Sen. Schumer on Gorsuch nominee: "When a nominee doesn't get 60 votes, you shouldn't change the rules -- you should change the nominee." pic.twitter.com/1QmmZZSkcT
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) April 2, 2017
He didn’t stop there. Schumer went after Senators he said were “bound and determined to change the rules and trample on Senate tradition” by lowering the 60-vote threshold, and said “We made one mistake, we shouldn’t have changed the rules for lower court judges.”
Schumer’s argument for eliminating the filibuster is not made in good faith – everyone knows if he was in the minority, he would be sounding a very different tune.
The Democrats’ efforts to change the rules and force through a federal election takeover that would eviscerate widely-popular provisions like voter ID are about one thing: power.
