Within Minutes Of Republican Obstruction, Warren Takes Another Swing At Filibuster
GOP effort to kill insurrection commission likely to put fresh pressure on Manchin, Sinema
Granted it was by a somewhat-smaller margin than first expected, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) carried off his promised obstruction to kill the formation of a bipartisan commission to study the events of January 6 Capitol insurrection.
Within minutes of the final 54-35 vote which fell short of the 60 needed to overcome McConnell's obstruction, Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) took to Twitter to once again call for Democrats to make the rules change to eliminate the filibuster as an option in the Senate.
Of the razor-slim Democratic Senate majority, Sens Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona have been the holdouts who have thus far prevented the majority from having the necessary votes to kill the filibuster.
Republican obstruction of the bipartisan commission — and perhaps the outspokenness of colleagues like Warren — will put fresh pressure on Manchin and Sinema to reconsider their opposition to filibuster reform.
Manchin, in particular, has been visibly and publicly frustrated with his Republican colleagues in the last couple of days, saying that a filibuster of a commission to look into the worst insurrection on US soil since the Civil War would be motivated only by politics.
The insurrection involved hundreds of violent Donald Trump supporters storming the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the legitimate certification of Joe Biden as the next American president, trying to install Trump for a second, illegal term in the White House.
Until the filibuster hammer came down, Manchin held out hope that “there’s 10 good people,” or the necessary 10 GOP senators to have joined with Democrats to have broken the filibuster.
That, of course, was not to be.