This guy got effectively demoted from his White House correspondent gig, in which he was a preening showboat and advocate during the last administration, to hosting a low-rated weekend show. Still craving attention, this "news"man – hilariously, CNN pretends they don't have opinion hosts – occasionally pops off with some leftist rant in a transparent effort to go viral. His "DeSantis variant" blathering comes to mind within the genre, and now he's added a new one to the list:
If Democrats are trying to figure out how to respond to America’s very conservative Supreme Court, they could look to the filibuster and ask themselves: “what would Mitch do?” My thoughts on the prospects of SCOTUS overturning Roe… https://t.co/uFmQNxaPd0
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) December 4, 2021
So much journalisming here. He's just a left-wing activist preemptively raging against the "hard right" Supreme Court because the institution might weaken or jettison Roe, returning abortion legislating to state legislators. Amid this tantrum, Acosta urges his fellow Democrats to be more like that ruthless Mitch McConnell and kill the filibuster. After all, that's what McConnell would do if he were in charge, Acosta argues. This is an extremely stupid point for several reasons, not the least of which is that McConnell was just in power. Very recently. While the Kentuckian was majority leader, Senate Democrats mounted many filibusters, obstructing legislation on issues ranging from border security, to police reform, to abortion. A frustrated President Trump pressured him repeatedly to rally the GOP caucus to end the legislative filibuster. McConnell and the GOP caucus repeatedly declined. This isn't ancient history. It happened under the last administration, which Acosta covered. He either has a very lousy memory and command of relevant facts, or he's ignoring the facts, in order to advance his partisan narrative. But in the wake of his little monologue, many people are generously reminding him of said relevant facts:
As @Acosta plays Dem strategist here — trying to invent an absurd pretext to destroy the Senate — remember that CNN bills this as straight news, not opinion.
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) December 4, 2021
You’d expect a top political reporter to remember that McConnell was in D’s shoes a YEAR ago, didn’t nuke the filibuster. https://t.co/EJJbncr1lo
And if Acosta's complaining about ending the filibuster for judicial appointments, then his complaint should be that McConnell asked, "What did Harry Reid do in 2013?"
— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) December 5, 2021
Ed makes another important point about just how flawed Acosta's half-baked thesis is. The filibuster nuking that has happened was detonated by the Democrats. Acosta has it all backward. Liberals and progressives constantly claim victimhood in these battles even when they are the aggressors. A related example:
Its so disingenuous to leave out that Senate **Democrats** eliminated the judicial filibuster, and their SCOTUS exception was not based on any principle, but a temporary placeholder as they waited to see which party controlled the next justice confirmation. https://t.co/2BHNvCOjas
— Brian Riedl ?? (@Brian_Riedl) December 2, 2021
To hammer out a whole analysis about the filibuster without featuring the acknowledgment that it was the Democrats who blew up the judicial filibuster (because they were angry that Republicans were using the obstruction tactics that they, the Democrats, had themselves pioneered) is the very definition of disingenuous. Read the history on this. After Democrats banished the filibuster on judicial nominations to spare themselves the pain of their own obstruction tactics, Republicans then confirmed a record number of judges by holding Democrats to their own standard – including after Democrats mounted the first-ever partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee, another novel escalation.
Again, review the relevant history, culminating in Republicans applying the Reid Rule to the Gorsuch nomination (which Democrats had been threatening to do, and absolutely would have done, if the Senate GOP had filibustered a Hillary Clinton SCOTUS pick). "Same story as the growth of the legislative filibuster, which Democrats happily escalated until Senate control flipped. Then it became a racist tool to be eliminated. It's so transparent and embarrassing," Riedl also notes, which is indisputably true, as well. Transparent and embarrassing is right. But so long as certain people remain in their feedback loop, I'm not sure they're capable of embarrassment.