Senator Maggie Hassan made clear why she now supports modifying the filibuster. And she necessarily scorched those who forced her hands.
Sen. Maggie Hassan excoriates Republican Senators
Senator Maggie Hassan decided to speak out of turn to correct the record. Republican Senator Tom Cotton called out Hassan for going back on her word in a letter supporting no change to filibuster. She would not take the rebuke kindly.
“I know I was not scheduled to speak,” Maggie Hassan said. “but I do want to respond as one of the signatories of the letter I associate myself with. Everything that the other signatories have talked about in terms of wanting to restore the Senate’s tradition of extended debate on issues of grave importance to the American people. But let me be clear about the reason that I now support an adjustment to the long-standing rules of the Senate. And it is because I never imagined when I signed that letter that not a single member of the Republican Party would stand up for our democracy.“
Hassan then went on to describe a degenerate Republican Party. She called them out for being the anti-democratic fascists they have become.
“Since January 6 when we saw an acceleration of state laws that would allow partisans to overturn the impartial count of an election,” Hassan said. “But if we do not have a functioning democracy where people know that when they vote that vote will be impartially counted and upheld, and the people who are defeated will accept defeat so that they can have an accountable elected representation in Washington, then there is no democracy. And when I signed that letter, I never imagined that today’s Republican Party would fail to stand up for democracy.“
Senator so wanted to make sure that America understood that the Republican Party is anti-democracy, she pointed it out twice in her short narrative. While Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are joining the Republican Party to stifle democracy, rest assured that the grassroots organizing can get through all the hoops the fascist has placed in the voting roadmap in the short term.