Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post: “The filibuster is not in the Constitution. Before the civil rights era, it was rarely used. It has been repeatedly modified, most dramatically by the creation of the reconciliation process. Huge spending bills chock full of policy shifts (e.g., a huge tax credit that halves child poverty) require only 51 votes; Supreme Court confirmations take only 50 votes. The notion that the filibuster is somehow an inviolate part of protecting minority rights is crumbling. And that seems to have driven some Republicans around the bend. The Post’s Sarah Binder writes: Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell (Ky.), argued Tuesday that the Senate filibuster ‘has no racial history at all. None. There’s no dispute among historians about that.’ That’s false. Historians know the filibuster is closely intertwined with the nation’s racial past and present. To be sure, senators have filibustered issues other than civil rights over the Senate’s history. But it is impossible to write that history without recognizing the centrality of race. Why is it so critical for Republicans to resort to such bald-faced lies? Probably the same reason Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) makes the ludicrous and entirely false claim that H.R. 1 would allow undocumented immigrants to vote. As the New York Times reports: ‘[Cruz] falsely claimed that the bill would register millions of undocumented immigrants to vote and accused Democrats of wanting the most violent criminals to cast ballots, too. In fact, it is illegal for noncitizens to vote, and the bill would do nothing to change that or a requirement that people registering to vote swear they are citizens.'”

“The current panic attack among Republicans stems from the prospect that much of the avalanche of anti-voting rollbacks in more than 40 states could be wiped out. That was precisely the reason Southern Dixiecrats engaged in filibusters during the 1950s and 1960s: In the name of ‘states’ rights,’ they wanted to deny non-Whites access to the ballot. It is not simply that the filibuster is related to race, but that Republicans now intend to use it for essentially the same nefarious purpose. In fact, the filibuster has been used time and again to perpetuate white supremacy. The Brennan Center for Justice explains that, in 1891, ‘a series of filibusters by Democrats threatened to derail legislation authorizing federal troops to supervise federal elections – an early use of the tool to block civil rights protections for Black Americans.'”