The far-right website The Federalist furiously reported on Thursday that the Senate had time to pass a resolution marking a dog parade, but not President Donald Trump's voter restriction bill.
"The Republican-controlled Senate passed a resolution on Feb. 12 so that Sen. Thom Tillis could have a dog parade but cannot find time to pass critical voting legislation," said the report. "Tillis’ resolution, which he submitted to the Senate earlier this month, allowed the 'use of the atrium in the Philip A. Hart Senate office building for a Bipawtisan Doggi Gras Pawrade' on Wednesday, Feb. 25. The resolution passed by unanimous consent."
By contrast, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has admitted that the votes do not exist to change Senate rules to bypass a filibuster, meaning that Trump's SAVE America Act is effectively dead.
The SAVE America Act would impose a strict national voter ID requirement, impose new documentation requirements to register to vote, and require states to subject run their voter rolls through a notoriously buggy Department of Homeland Security citizenship verification system.
"Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s latest excuse is that he lacks a consensus in the Senate Republican conference to use a talking filibuster to get the legislation passed," the article fumed. "As Texas Rep. Chip Roy explained in a letter exclusively obtained by The Federalist, in a talking filibuster, as long as all Senate Republicans who have either co-sponsored or publicly supported the legislation show up and present a live quorum, Democrats would have to talk nonstop in order to delay a vote at just 51 votes, rather than the typical 60-threshold filibuster vote. 'If no one is speaking and a quorum is present, the vote on the pending business happens automatically,' Roy said. But Thune claims a talking filibuster is a nonstarter for now."
In practice, it's not as simple as Roy describes, because it opens the door for Democrats to introduce an endless stream of amendments that Republicans would have to vote down one after the other. Ultimately, Democrats could easily derail the entire legislation through this process.
Thune's announcement that the bill doesn't have a path comes as he is reportedly rebuking his counterparts in the House for spending so much time trying to force the issue.