Nuking the filibuster would come back to haunt Republicans

There are no saviors or happy endings in politics — just a grueling, soul-sucking, forever-war of attrition. Everyone in power seems to forget this detail.That includes President Donald Trump, who has again decided to exert pressure on Republicans to overturn the legislative filibuster and end the Democrat-generated government shutdown.“Get rid of the Filibuster, and get rid of it, NOW,” Trump posted on Truth Social.“We have to get the country open.And the way we’re going to do it this afternoon is to terminate the filibuster,” the president reportedly told Republican senators at a breakfast this week. Nuking the filibuster is unprincipled, but it also makes little political sense: Trump would be doing Democrats a huge favor by greasing the wheels for exploiting fleeting one-party national majorities in the future, which will allow them to shove through massive generational “reforms” without any national consensus.And they would be able to do it without taking any political heat for nuking the filibuster. In recent years, they’ve coalesced around an argument that says the 60-vote threshold to cut off debate in the Senate is antiquated — a “Jim Crow relic,” said one-time filibuster champion former President Barack Obama — and fundamentally “undemocratic.”Democrats contend that the filibuster facilitates “minority rule,” by which they mean “federalism.” Yes, filibusters protect the minority because crass majoritarianism is objectively un-American, as is centralized one-party “democratic” rule from Washington.The filibuster isn’t in the Constitution, but in many ways it is one of the last tools left in DC that can limit the power of the federal government and compel separation of powers.Even as a political consideration, ending the filibuster is counterproductive. Trump warns that Democrats will trash the 60% threshold the first chance they get.

Maybe.But they had already tried to eliminate it during former President Jo...