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Larry Kudlow: Passing S1 Plus Filibuster Repeal Would Mean It's 'Katy, Bar the Door'



Sheer, raw, brutal, political power is what the Democrats are testing in the battle over the bill known as Senate 1, their big election takeover attempt which just failed to gain cloture. To quote the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, this election takeover bill is “a partisan power-grab by the left... to rig the rules of American elections permanently in their favor.”

Mr. McConnell also linked the Democratic Party’s dream, albeit a recent dream, of ending the filibuster with their dream of rigging American elections. In his powerful speech on the floor of the Senate, he bid us “remember the last presidential election saw the highest voter turnout in decades even amidst a once in a century pandemic.”

The Democrats, of course, also shout racist when they can’t get their totalitarian ways. Upholding the filibuster is racist, photo IDs for state-run elections are racist. Excuse me, but no, they’re not. In the last election, to cite but one example, the African American turnout was twice as high in Mississippi as it was in Massachusetts.

Republican state legislatures have moved to ensure safe and secure elections. In Oklahoma they expanded early voting. In Kentucky they expanded online registration and early voting. In Georgia, they also expanded voting hours and eligibility for absentee ballots. But they correctly insisted on a photo ID as an eligibility test.

Polls show that 80% of Americans support requirements for a voter ID, including a photograph. Senator Manchin's substitute bill does not require photo ID. You could use a utility bill or banking statement. A study by economist John Lott finds that 46 of 47 European countries require a government issued photo ID to vote. Great Britain is an exemption but Prime Minister Boris Johnson is about to make photo ID's mandatory.

By the way, polls show that minority voters overwhelmingly support photo IDs, according to Tuesday’s hotline from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. The Senate Democrats failed to gain cloture Tuesday, and they will never get the 60 votes to proceed on debate or to ultimately win unless they destroy the filibuster. The two really go hand-in-hand.

Arizona’s senior senator, Kyrsten Sinema, ripped into her fellow Democrats in a tough op-ed in the Washington Post. She opposes “repeated radical reversals” of federal law, including voter ID laws. In 2017, some 61 senators, including 33 democrats, signed a letter lead by Susan Collins of Maine and Chris Coons of Delaware asking Senate leaders to preserve the filibuster during the Trump presidency.

The naked Democrat power grab would march over the side of the end of the earth into some kind of modern day socialism if the filibuster were ended and if their voting bill were ever passed. In respect of the filibuster, only need 51 votes would needed for anything — tax hikes, massive spending, the Green New Deal, open borders.

And throw in, for good measure, unlimited welfarism without work requirements, massive spending increases for Medicare and Medicaid, government takeover the tech sector, undermining the defense budget, Supreme Court justices — and even packing the Supreme Court. It would be Katy bar the door. You wouldn’t need reconciliation. You wouldn’t need anything.

The election takeover bill would permit reckless gerrymandering for congressional seats. The combination of S.1 and filibuster repeal would violate every paragraph, sentence, word, and comma in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It would turn this country beyond the European welfare state and straight over the Berlin Wall without passing Go or collecting $200.

It would out-China China, going beyond state capitalism into some bizarre technology driven socialism. Sheer, raw, brutal, political power is at stake here. Plan and simple. The Democrats will keep trying. It’s a lot more important than interest rates or the stock market. Then again, you know what? That kind of left-wing, democratic, hegemonic power would crush the stock market and blow interest rates and inflation sky high.

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From Mr. Kudlow’s Fox News broadcast.


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Posted: June 23, 2021 Wednesday 05:00 PM