U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema on Wednesday toured U.S. Customs and Border Protection migrant facilities in her home state of Arizona, and praised the Senate filibuster which is standing in the way of passing crucial voter protection legislation in a hyper-partisan 50-50 Senate.
Sinema, a conservative Democrat who is increasingly coming under fire not only for her right-wing voting record (she voted with President Donald Trump 50.4% of the time, per FiveThirtyEight,) but for what some Democrats see as detached and callous behavior, and opposition to helping secure the Democratic agenda.
A large and growing number of Democrats are demanding Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer kill the filibuster, a Jim Crow-era relic that “was designed and used for decades to thwart civil rights legislation,” as far back as 99 years ago.
Sen. Sinema, along with her fellow conservative Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have steadfastly held on to the filibuster, refusing to even consider allowing it to be killed.
On Thursday, news began to spread of her trip with far right Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), who voted to filibuster the commission on the January 6 insurrection, a vote Sinema did not even make.
Sinema on Wednesday spread some disinformation about the filibuster (video below, full video here.)
She called it “a tool that protects the democracy of our nation rather than allowing our country to ricochet wildly every two to four years back and forth between policies,” while ignoring the attacks on American democracy from Republicans like Senator Cornyn, who have gone so far as to support the violent and deadly insurrection, and then attempt to whitewash it.
“The idea of the filibuster was created by those who came before the United States Senate to create comity, and to encourage senators to find bipartisanship and work together. And while there are some who don’t believe that bipartisanship is possible. I think that I’m a daily example that bipartisanship is possible, not just this trip today and tomorrow that John and I were doing, but the work that John and I and I and many other my colleagues and both parties do on a regular basis.”
Calling herself “a cheerful and happy warrior” who is “aggressively seeking bipartisanship,” Sinema also claimed the filibuster “was created as a tool to bring together, members of different parties to find compromise and coalition.”
That no longer happens, and as former deputy chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said last week, at this point the filibuster is destroying our democratic way of governance:
She also claimed the filibuster is “protect[ing] the rights of the minority, from the majority, regardless of which party is in a majority of the time.”
Many are now criticizing Sinema over her latest self-inflicted wound.
Here’s former Democratic NYC Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito:
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