Over the
weekend, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) embraced the Republican filibuster,
giving Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) veto power over
all future legislation.
Manchin, the chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, penned an essay in the Charleston Gazette-Mail unequivocally stating, “I will not vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster.”
Current Senate rules require 60 votes to overcome the filibuster, which gives Republicans veto power in the 50-50 Senate. In May, McConnell announced that “One-hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration.”
In an interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace on Sunday, Manchin sharply criticized McConnell’s partisan obstruction: “I think he’s 100% wrong in trying to block all the good things that we’re trying to do for America.”
In his essay, Manchin repeatedly invoked the possibility of bipartisanship as his justification for rejecting legislation such as the voting-rights For the People Act (H.R. 1).
However, Manchin also admitted there are only seven Republicans, not ten, that are willing to even potentially break with Mitch McConnell or Donald Trump.
Are the very Republican senators who voted to impeach Trump because of actions that led to an attack on our democracy unwilling to support actions to strengthen our democracy
Manchin’s low threshhold for bipartisanship – opposing Trump’s incitement of insurrection that led to an assault on the Senate chambers – was met by only seven Republicans. The vote required a 2/3 majority to convict Trump, but failed 57-43.
Manchin said to Wallace he’s aware of the numbers: “[W]e have seven brave Republicans that continue to vote for what they know is right and the facts as they see them, not worrying about the political consequences.”
He has not explained how 57 votes is sufficient to break a filibuster, since it’s not.
To wit: at the end of May, McConnell and 34 other Republicans successfully filibustered the legislation to create a bipartisan committee to investigate the attack on our democracy.