Schumer is going to put S1 — the Senate version of the For The People Act- up for a vote in the Senate on Tuesday, and he will let it be open to amendments like the ones Joe Manchin wants. That’s good news. Unfortunately, S1 will never get voted on because Moscow Mitch has promised a filibuster. And Moscow Mitch has vowed that all 50 Senate Republicans will vote to sustain his filibuster. And that is the bad news.
And it should surprise no one, except maybe Joe Manchin.
Senate Republicans spent months praising Joe Manchin for his insistence on cross-party compromise. Next week they will almost surely end his hopes for a bipartisan deal on elections.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he believed all 50 Republicans would oppose Sen. Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) slimmed-down elections compromise, which focuses on expanding early voting and ending partisan gerrymandering in federal elections. And it’s not clear there’s a single Republican vote to even begin debate on the matter, potentially dooming Manchin's proposals before they can even make it into the bill.
Both Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said they would likely oppose a procedural vote next week that would bring Democrats’ massive elections reform bill to the Senate floor. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that the Senate could amend the bill to adopt Manchin’s changes. But Romney said supporting that strategy “doesn’t make a lot of sense to me" and Murkowski said “Joe hasn’t briefed me on any of this.”
Emphasis mine.
So Murkowski was all for something about voting rights, until she is not. And Romney — Corporations are PEOPLE! — says that amending S1 is not just something that makes sense to him. If S1 gave corporations the number of votes equal to their bottom line, I am sure Romney would come around to supporting S1.
The only drama on Tuesday will be the look on Joe Manchin’s face when the vote turns out that not one Republican will support his efforts at bipartisanship.
The rest of the Politico article has plenty of quotes from Senate Republicans pissing all over voting rights. But you can go read them yourself. It will not surprise anyone, except Joe Manchin and maybe Krysten Sinema.
