What if I told you Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has the power and the votes — right now — to save Republicans’ congressional majorities, President Trump’s second-term agenda, and maybe the republic itself, all while poleaxing Democrats on the short side of an 84-15 issue?
It sounds like fantasy. But like the Lady of the Lake from Arthurian legend, 2026 is offering up to the GOP a political weapon almost as powerful as Excalibur itself: an extended Democrat talking filibuster of national voter ID legislation.
Popular Idea, Toxic Opposition
Requiring voters to prove their citizenship is one of the most popular ideas in the country, with 84 percent of Americans supporting and only 15 percent opposed. That’s why 36 states and most of the world’s developed countries already have it on the books.
To most Americans, the only thing suspicious about voter ID is why anyone would oppose it. Surely no one wants noncitizens voting, right? Right?
Actually, Democrat leaders, donors, and activists very much want noncitizens voting. Elected Democrats are perfectly aware that the party machine registers ineligible voters and harvests their ballots as a matter of course. They also know that their woke base believes voter ID laws are pure evil, part of Donald Trump’s neo-fascist conspirazzzzzzzzzzz…
Conventional political wisdom, therefore, dismisses voter ID as a legislative nonstarter. Sure, Republicans could pass a bill like the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act through the House of Representatives, as they did last April. But Senate Democrats would filibuster it, denying the GOP the 60 votes they’d need to end debate and pass the bill.
But hold on a second.
Why would Republicans want to end an around-the-clock, nationally televised circus where Democrat senators defy 84 percent of the country — and about 70 percent of Democrats! — to defend illegal immigrant voter fraud in the middle of an election year?
Usually, party unity is a political asset. In the case of Democrat activists and elites’ opposition to voter ID, it’s a toxic asset, like the subprime mortgage derivatives that bankrupted Wall Street in 2008. Democrats can’t politically profit off their extremist ideological commitment against voter ID, but they also can’t unload it.
A Senate debate on the SAVE Act would fork Democrats between a country they can’t persuade and a base they can’t defy.
Historic Upside
For Senate Republicans, the strategy is all upside.
Today, they are staring down the barrel of a midterm election rout and two years of investigations and impeachments. On their current course, Democrats’ illegal voter registration programs will continue apace, and their violent, insurrectionist activists will declare victory in 2026 and start working on 2028.
Senate Republicans could reverse all those trends in a matter of days just by putting the House-passed voter ID bill on the Senate floor.
A Real Filibuster
Politicos who have only been Congress-watching this century have a funhouse-mirrors notion of the U.S. Senate’s legislative procedure.
In the post-Harry Reid Senate, majorities only bring bills to the floor once negotiators have secured 60 votes behind closed doors. Bills are called up Monday evening, and a cloture motion (to end debate) is immediately filed, starting a countdown clock that leads to a vote by Thursday.
This is not how the Senate is supposed to function. The old Senate process — with open-ended debate — is still the rules default setting. If Senate Republicans considered the SAVE Act under the traditional process, it would spring a trap from which Democrats might never recover.
Here’s how it would work. Leader Thune would call up the House-passed voter ID bill. At this point, the Senate would be “on” the SAVE Act. Senate rules would dictate that a vote on the bill — at a 51-vote simple majority threshold — must be the next thing the Senate does. The only way to delay that vote is for a senator to stand up and speak — indefinitely.
It’s harder to sustain than it sounds. To give an hours-long speech, a senator may not leave the floor, not even to use the restroom. He may not sit. He may not eat. If he so much as leans on his desk, he loses the floor, which either triggers the vote or requires another senator to begin speaking.
Democrat colleagues could piggyback on the filibuster and give long speeches of their own — but only two per senator. Once every filibustering senator’s speeches have been exhausted, the SAVE Act vote happens automatically.
Cloture — the 60 votes required to end debate the easy way — isn’t needed. Sheer physical exertion will carry the day.
There are tricks Democrats can play in this process. They can try to call up amendments, adjourn, or make other procedural maneuvers. Republicans can table those motions with 51 votes. This strategy isn’t quite free. It would require senators to work more than their preferred two-and-a-half days a week. Republican senators would have to stay on or near the floor for as long as Democrats are speaking. And Democrats could drag this out for as long as they can sustain the physical toll.
But however bored they might get on the floor, Senate Republicans would also be buoyed watching Democrats’ light their midterm campaign message on fire.
A Billion-Dollar Campaign Ad
Think about how a voter ID filibuster would play out, politically.
On Day 1, energetic Democrats would run to the floor, thump their chests, and join the fun.
By Day 2, media attention would sweep away all other political news. Left-wing journalists will breathlessly promote the Democrats’ cause.
By Day 3, the whole country will have been talking about voter ID — an 84 percent GOP issue — for 48 straight hours. Septuagenarian Democrats will still be on the floor showing off for a shrinking audience of blue-haired hysterics and late-night talk shows’ group therapy patients.
By Day 4, polling will show the country still supports voter ID. But Democrats’ base will demand they keep up the fight.
The hapless filibuster will be a 24/7 Democrat-produced GOP campaign ad that will continue until Democrats surrender.
This is how landmark legislation has always been passed. It’s a fiction that Senate majorities start with all the votes they need — that’s never the case. Rather, they must make the case, persuade their colleagues, and get the American people on their side. A talking filibuster is a way to check all three boxes, right now, rather than taking a single cloture vote, losing, and throwing up their hands in helplessness.
The only reason for Senate Republicans not to do this — not to save their majority, President Trump’s agenda, and the integrity of America’s elections — is that it would personally inconvenience them for a few days.
No one in America could possibly think that’s a good reason — not the voters and not President Trump.
Rachel Bovard is the vice president of programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute. She served on Capitol Hill for over a decade, including as legislative director to Sen. Rand Paul and the executive director of the Senate Steering Committee.
