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Senate Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell has called out President Joe Biden’s speech pushing for the Senate to change its filibuster rules to pass voting and elections legislation, saying it was a “rant,” “incoherent,” “incorrect,” “beneath his office” and “unbecoming of a President of the United States.”
Biden in Georgia on Tuesday, January 11, called supporters of the Republican Senate rule changes to civil rights icons and opponents of the changes to segregationists and a leader of the Confederacy.
“At consequential moments in history, they present a choice,” said Biden in his speech. “Do you want to be the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”
Filibuster rules are rules in the Senate that require 60 percent of the senators to agree on a legislation before it is passed.
Many Democratic senators want to change the filibuster rules in order to pass legislation expanding access to the ballot box. In the last year, 19 states passed 34 laws that restrict voting in some way. The laws limit voter turn out and minority races from voting without the right credentials.
Despite Biden’s pressure, Senate Democrats are unlikely to pass his voting legislation, because of Denocrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who are unlikely to support the necessary rules changes.
McConnell said that Democrats don’t have enough votes to eliminate the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to advance most legislation, saying Biden had compared “a bipartisan majority of senators to literal traitors.”
“You could not invent a better advertisement for the legislative filibuster than what we’ve just seen, a President abandoning rational persuasion for pure, pure, demagoguery,” McConnell said.
“A president shouting that 52 senators and millions of Americans are racist unless he gets whatever he wants is proving exactly why the framers built the Senate to check his power.”
“How profoundly — profoundly — unpresidential,” the Kentucky Republican said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “I’ve known, liked and personally respected Joe Biden for many years. I did not recognize the man at the podium yesterday.”
The first bill democrats want to pass would include establishing Election Day as a public holiday, mandating same-day voter registration, guaranteeing that all voters can request mail-in ballots and restoring federal voting rights for ex-felons once they are released from prison. The second measure would restore the power of the federal government to oversee state voting laws in order to prevent discrimination against minority voters. The third bill would further clarify the process of certifying a presidential election after then-President Donald Trump and his advisers urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to toss out Biden’s slate of electors on January 6, 2021.
McConnell also claimed on Wednesday that Democrats are undermining the 2022 elections as polls show Biden’s approval rating underwater.
“The people who spent November 2020 through January 21 preaching sermons about the strength and the sanctity of our democracy are now undertaking to delegitimize the next election in case they lose it,” McConnell said.
