A voter ID filibuster would be a 24/7 GOP campaign ad.
What if I told you Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has the power and the votes — right now — to save Republicans’ congressional majorities, President Trump’s second-term agenda, and maybe the republic itself, all while poleaxing Democrats on the short side of an 84-15 issue?
It sounds like fantasy. But like the Lady of the Lake from Arthurian legend, 2026 is offering up to the GOP a political weapon almost as powerful as Excalibur itself: an extended Democrat talking filibuster of national voter ID legislation.
Popular Idea, Toxic Opposition
Requiring voters to prove their citizenship is one of the most popular ideas in the country, with 84 percent of Americans supporting and only 15 percent opposed. That’s why 36 states and most of the world’s developed countries already have it on the books.
To most Americans, the only thing suspicious about voter ID is why anyone would oppose it. Surely no one wants noncitizens voting, right? Right?
Actually, Democrat leaders, donors, and activists very much want noncitizens voting. Elected Democrats are perfectly aware that the party machine registers ineligible voters and harvests their ballots as a matter of course. They also know that their woke base believes voter ID laws are pure evil, part of Donald Trump’s neo-fascist conspirazzzzzzzzzzz…
Conventional political wisdom, therefore, dismisses voter ID as a legislative nonstarter. Sure, Republicans could pass a bill like the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act through the House of Representatives, as they did last April. But Senate Democrats would filibuster it, denying the GOP the 60 votes they’d need to end debate and pass the bill.
But hold on a second.
Why would Republicans want to end an around-the-clock, nationally televised circus where Democrat senators defy 84 percent of the country — and about 70 percent of Democrats! — to defend illegal immigrant voter fraud in the middle of an election year?
Usually, party unity is a political asset. In the case of Democrat activists and elites’ opposition to voter ID, it’s a toxic asset, like the subprime mortgage derivatives that bankrupted Wall Street in 2008. Democrats can’t politically profit off their extremist ideological commitment against voter ID, but they also can’t unload it.
A Senate debate on the SAVE Act would fork Democrats between a country they can’t persuade and a base they can’t defy.
Historic Upside
For Senate Republicans, the strategy is all upside.
Today, they are staring down the barrel of a midterm election rout and two years of investigations and impeachments. On their current course, Democrats’ illegal voter registration programs will continue apace, and their violent, insurrectionist activists will declare victory in 2026 and start working on 2028.
Senate Republicans could reverse all those trends in a matter of days just by putting the House-passed voter ID bill on the Senate floor.
A Real Filibuster --->READ MORE HERE
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said on Tuesday that Republican senators will discuss employing a seldom-used interpretation of the Senate Rules to require that Democrats actively hold the Sente floor with continuous debate — a so-called standing filibuster — to increase the chances of Congress passing nationwide voting reform.
Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) received assurances from President Trump that Senate Republicans would strongly consider forcing Democrats to actively hold the Senate floor for hours on end if they attempt to block the SAVE Act, which would tighten rules for voter registration around the country.
Luna and Burchett received those assurances in exchange for their votes in support of a rule to bring a five-bill government funding package, along with a two-week Homeland Security funding stopgap, to the House floor on Tuesday.
Thune told reporters Tuesday morning that Senate Republicans will have “conversations” about requiring Democrats to stage standing filibuster to block the bill but he emphasized he hasn’t committed to deploying that tactic, which could tie up the Senate floor for weeks and set an important precedent.
“We got some members, as you know, who’ve expressed an interested in that so we’re going to have a conversation about it but there weren’t any commitments made, no,” Thune said. --->READ MORE HERE
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