VOTE NO ON THE SAVE ACT. AND DON’T TRASH THE FILIBUSTER.

As the Senate votes this week on repressing our right to vote because Republicans in Congress have screwed the pooch so badly under the Trump administration, here’s a textbook example of what it looks like to sell your soul to try and hang on to power. Power that is no longer deserved. Senators on both sides of the aisle have long understood the power that honoring the filibuster gives both sides. It’s a form of mutually assured retention of power. But Texas Senator John Cornyn, long a proponent of the filibuster, put out an op-ed in the New York Post arguing that the SAVE America Act is now more important than it is. “For many years, I believed that if the US Senate scrapped the filibuster, Texas and our nation would stand to lose more than we would gain … My fellow conservatives and I have proudly used the 60-vote threshold to protect the country from all sorts of bad ideas and dangerous policies. But when the reality on the ground changes, leaders must take stock and adapt…Today, Democrats are weaponizing the Senate’s rules to block the SAVE America Act, defund the Department of Homeland Security and hurt the American people — all to spite President Donald Trump.” That’s quite a reversal. So much for long-voiced, long-held principles tossed aside in service of Trump from the Texas Republican. Who incidentally is facing an uphill battle to hold onto his Senate seat. He’s facing a primary challenge from Texas AG Ken Paxton. Neither candidate reached the 50% threshold necessary for an outright win, so there will be a runoff on May 26. And there may be a truly viable Democrat running as well. Could it be that even Texas might be tired of the same old self-serving BS coming from the elderly ranks of our statesman class? In any case, we are about to find out if other Republican senators want to hold onto any of their institutional power. Or are willing to throw it away on Trump and a law that has strong arguments against its constitutionality. It seems that at least some portion of the Senate’s professed long-held commitments are shallow and fungible depending on the state of their chances for reelection. And that is the exact reason you guys are getting voted out all over the place. We smell mendacity. Desperation. Shamelessness. And complete lack of any real conviction on much of anything. Except to keeping your jobs.