In his first term, one day after Republicans failed in the vote to repeal and replace Obamacare, as they had fervently promised voters, President Donald Trump wrote, “Republicans in the Senate will NEVER win if they don’t go to a 51 vote majority NOW. They look like fools and are just wasting time.”
Trump also tweeted at the time: “If the Senate Democrats ever got the chance, they would switch to a 51 majority vote in first minute. They are laughing at R’s. MAKE CHANGE!”
Trump’s words were virtually prophetic. On January 19, 2022, Democrats attempted to use the “nuclear option” to eliminate the 60-vote rule entirely. They gained 48 votes, with Democrats Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin voting no.
In 2024, when Chuck Schumer believed that Democrats would win back Congress and the White House, he declared, “We got it up to 48, but, of course, Sinema and Manchin voted no; that’s why we couldn’t change the rules. Well, they’re both gone, Ruben Gallego is for it, and we have 51. So even losing Manchin, we still have 50.”
Had the Democrats won as they expected in 2024, Tim Walz would have voted to break the 50-50 tie, and Democrats would have immediately gone on to pack the Supreme Court (inevitably devastating the U.S. Constitution), passing socialist spending that would bankrupt the nation, along with a host of onerous and outrageous legislation, including corrupt voting laws to give the insane left control of this country indefinitely. America may never know how close we all came to national destruction.
Trump and Republicans are now in the process of attempting to pass a Continuing Resolution, which would maintain spending at current levels (essentially the same as under Biden) for a few weeks until the Republican appropriations process can emerge from committee.
Nevertheless, Republicans are met by a belligerent Democrat minority in the U.S. Senate, who have now shut the government down, wielding the undefeated 60-vote rule they so desperately tried to abolish under Joe Biden.
Trump and the Republicans have finally and brilliantly demonstrated this to be a Democrat shutdown, which has pressured Schumer into an extremely difficult circumstance for his party. This may give Republicans a temporary victory. However, we must not underestimate the left-wing media and the intrinsic disadvantage for Republicans.
It is also critical for us to realize that the real battle is yet to come when an actual Republican spending plan (appropriations) is put forward, one they hope will meet the nation’s constitutional needs and actually change the trajectory of America’s parade into financial midnight.
Democrats’ first and most coveted scenario is to force government into a shutdown again for as long as possible, and, with the help of the truth-be-damned media leftists, successfully blame it on the Republicans (who are, “after all,” in “control”), thus attempting to leave no Republican standing in the Northern Hemisphere in midterm elections.
Alternatively, Democrats will leverage the justifiable fear of their first preference to blackmail Republican leaders into accepting their second most coveted scenario: Turning a Republican appropriations bill into a “must-pass” Democrat appropriations bill, “forcing Republicans to spend like drunken Democrats.”
This will, once again, cause Republicans to cannibalize each other, especially in the House. The Speaker would be left with the choice of trying to force conservative Republicans to abandon their fiscal and moral sanity to supply the votes to pass the now-Democrat spending bill. Or agonizingly breaking faith with conservative Republicans and the American people, and resorting to Democrat votes to pass the now-Democrat spending bill.
Either choice inevitably increases the risk of, once again, discouraging our base, losing the midterm, giving Democrats power to halt the legislative march of this historic, once-in-America’s-lifetime presidency of Donald Trump, and, once again, dragging this noble Republic a few remaining inches closer to the precipice of a fiscal and moral abyss.
Immediately after Donald Trump was elected the first time, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pompously declared, “the Senate is not like the House,” and vowed that the Senate would never change the august Motion-to-Proceed-to-Consider (60-vote rule).
Only a few months later, Democrats proceeded to arbitrarily and outrageously filibuster Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. In the glaring light of political reality, McConnell and other senators, who had made the elitist assertion that they would never change the 60-vote rule for confirming Supreme Court Justices, changed their minds instantaneously. The three particular Supreme Court nominees appointed by Donald Trump during his first term would never have been confirmed otherwise.
Republicans changed a 60-vote rule that was never part of the Constitution, which may have saved the Constitution. Now the question occurs: Will they change the same rule for a chance to save America from national disintegration and bankruptcy?
In Trump’s second term, beyond the inexpressible gravity of the fiscal considerations, Senate Democrats have continuously used the 60-vote rule as a “weapon of mass legislative obstruction” preventing a fair vote on bills to get men out of women’s sports, protecting babies born alive who had survived after being aborted, and sanctioning the International Criminal Court, which had issued a warrant for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Among the most insidious aspects of the 60-vote rule is that it obscures the legislative process from the American people. It allows politically self-serving senators from both parties to escape from difficult, on-the-record votes.
It is a tool of obfuscation and deception that gives the minority de facto control over legislative bills in Congress before they ever come to the Senate floor for debate, while leaving voters essentially clueless. It destroys accountability and simply disempowers the American people.
Ironically, the 60-vote rule does not foster cooperation between the two parties, but rather, catalyzes chaotic contention that, in actual practice, almost always favors Democrats over Republicans long-term.
Republicans must pound one thing into our heads. We are now in a desperate war for the soul of this nation and the future of our children, with a leftist-captured Democratic Party that has relentlessly demonstrated a resolute loathing for the ideals that made America great.
Democrat leaders have consistently pursued their strategy of telling Republicans, “Nice doggie, nice doggie,” until they can find a rock. If one looks at the record, they could not possibly have articulated their plan more clearly than they already have.
Given the polarization in America and what the Democrat left has become, the question is not whether they are viscerally determined to regain sufficient control to summarily end the 60-vote rule and fundamentally undo the America our warriors have poured out their blood to defend. The question is whether Republicans have the courage and the foresight to prevent them from proceeding.
Yes, we can bring impressive political pressure on them for a while. We can pretend the laws of mathematics don’t exist for a while. We can try to sell the American people on another dirt and ice cream result … for a while.
Or we can seize a moment that may never return to replace a twisted 60-vote rule that empowers America’s opponents to abrogate the Senate’s basic functionality and constitutional duty with a reasonable process that provides full, adequate debate and complete transparency in a functioning U.S. Senate as the Founding Fathers dreamed.
This could elevate the success of the Trump presidency to an unimaginable level and finally give the American people an honest glimpse of what Republican policy looks like.
It will then become a sacred responsibility for Republicans to humbly wield control of government to implement noble, principled policies and processes that the American people, even some Democrats, will recognize as truly restorative to our American Constitutional Republic and the hope it represents to all humanity.
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