Whole Hog Politics: Trump snares the Senate with filibuster bait 

[Watch Whole Hog Politics live: Join us today at 9 a.m. ET at TheHill.com as Chris Stirewalt and host Bill Sammon break down this week’s political news and answer questions from a live online audience.]

Would Senate Republicans rather lose a Texas race and put their majority very much in danger this November or give up the 60-vote threshold for most legislation that they have championed for decades?

That’s the question with which Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has — with the hammer of President Trump driving the wedge home — used to split the Senate Republican Conference. 

First, the context. In the wake of last week’s Texas primary, all signs pointed to Trump endorsing incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in his runoff with challenger Paxton.

Paxton’s big, months-long lead in the polls had fizzled, and he ended up finishing second to Cornyn. It would, therefore, be hard to argue that Paxton had earned the presidential nod, despite Trump’s obvious appreciation for the Texan’s defiance in the face of a mountain of criminal, ethical and personal scandals.

Though it’s unclear that Trump’s endorsement alone would be enough to deliver the race for Cornyn, an endorsement plus some combination of carrots and sticks for Paxton might get him out of the race. This would be great for Republicans because a) Cornyn is the much better general election candidate against the Democrats’ surprise primary winner, state Rep. James Talarico, and b) It would save tens of millions of dollars that otherwise would be spent in a damaging runoff campaign.

It seems like Trump was persuaded, even brandishing one of those sticks against a defiant Paxton last week. But then, Paxton made an offer that appealed very much to Trump: Paxton would agree to drop out of the race if the Senate agreed to change its rules so that it could pass a package of election rules without any Democratic votes.

This was like waving a Big Mac in front of the president. Trump not only is obsessed with what he now calls the “Save America Act” — the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act — but he has long wanted to do away with the 60-vote threshold. If Republicans could ram through legislation on party-line votes, Trump’s power over his party in the Senate would be maximized. No more saying “Oh, gee. We wish we could, but we’ll never get seven Democrats.” The president could use his power with primary voters to punish any Republicans who resisted the bills he wanted. Under the Paxton proposal, Trump would get a more radically MAGA Senate without even having to drag a radically MAGA Senate candidate through the general election in Texas. He could have his burger and eat it too.

Presidents of both parties have long resented the legislative filibuster, particularly Democrats like Barack Obama who wanted to do big things but found a Senate that proved a better venue for small ball. Since the current rules went into place in 1975, though, Republicans have mostly defended it as a bulwark against executive overreach and the protection of the power of the minority party. 

Since 1806, the Senate has allowed unlimited debate on any legislation, granting individual senators the privilege of holding the floor for as long as they wanted. Thirty years after that, with the Sectional Crisis and, eventually, the Civil War, looming, senators began to take advantage of that rule to blockade legislation by just holding the floor — what came to be known as filibustering. The Senate muddled through until progressives in the early 20th century demanded a change. First, the direct election of senators in 1913, and then, “cloture.” In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson grew frustrated with the Senate’s resistance to his efforts to get the United States into World War I and expand his powers and got Democrats to change the rules so that debate could be ended by a two-thirds majority.

Wilson’s fellow Southern Democrats would subsequently make effective use of that high threshold in the postwar years by sticking together and filibustering civil rights legislation. So, in the suite of rule reforms in the Watergate era, Senators made two significant changes. First, budget bills would be deemed exempt from the debate rules and could pass with a simple majority — a tool called........

© The Hill