WATCH: Senator Tom Cotton Rests His Case By Reciting Chuck Schumer's Past Pro-Filibuster Comments
In the face of political gain, Democrats have forgotten their history of supporting the filibuster.
As the Senate quarrels over the filibuster — with Dems wanting to eliminate the procedure to extinguish parity — Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) revealed how ardent Democrats once stood to retain the filibuster until political winds began to shift in a radical new direction.
Rather than state his personal views on retaining the filibuster, Sen. Cotton recited past support spoken by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
WATCH:
The bait-and-switch highlighted the Dems' hypocrisy with wanting to eradicate the filibuster, which has safeguarded opposition to plans stuffed by a political wishlist.
Cotton quoted parts of Schumer's Senate speech from May 18, 2007:
"We are on the precipice of a crisis, a constitutional crisis. The checks and balances which have been at the core of this Republic are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option, the checks and balances which say if you get 51 percent of the vote you do not get your way 100 percent of the time ... That is what we call abuse of power. There is, unfortunately, a whiff of extremism in the air."
Cotton mimicked the fervor previously used by Schumer, which has transformed into full opposition with the agenda of passing legislation without the 60-vote supermajority. He delivered the salient points with the same hyperbole:
"The ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the founding fathers called the cooling saucer of democracy into a rubber stamp of dictatorship."
"It will be a doomsday for democracy the day if we do."
"I, for one, hope and pray that it will not come to this."
The Arkansas senator then turned on the candor to point on the jarring difference between Schumer's stance nowadays and from 15 years ago.
"Every word in my speech today was originally spoken by our esteemed college: the senior senator from New York, Chuck Schumer."
"My how times have changed," added Cotton.
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