The Attacks on Georgia's Election Law Are Really About the Filibuster

This is Holy Week for the world’s several billion Christians.  They believe that the world tortured and killed Jesus of Nazareth, who physically rose again from the dead on the third day following his crucifixion.  Christians believe that by embracing this as historic fact and developing a relationship with Christ, a person can obtain salvation and dwell with God eternally.

As Democrats and the progressive American left drift away from Christian orthodoxy into the world, they have lost their view of eternal salvation and instead fixate on the here and now.  Instead of moral calls for eternal salvation, the left has embraced moral calls to build heaven on earth.  Any impediment to that heaven on earth has to be ruthlessly fought with a fierce, moral urgency.

In the past decade, Democrats applied their fierce moral urgency to gerrymandering.  They claimed any gerrymandering was immoral.  Now, with just a five seat majority in the House, they have conveniently bailed on the moral arguments against gerrymandering.

Instead, the Democrats have turned all their moral outrage against the Senate filibuster.  Humorously, up until the Democrats took back the Senate, their moral outrage was about the Senate itself.  We should be impressed with how quickly the Democrats shift their moral claims based on the shifts in their power.

Right now, there is a fierce and moral urgency that the filibuster stands in the way of their utopian view of an equitable society.  The filibuster stands between an unjust American society and equality, global healing, justice, fairness, and every other utopian value progressives have packaged in woke garb.

Any issue that can be highlighted by Democrats, either fairly or through dishonesty, to build a moral case against the filibuster must be used.  Thus, in Georgia, the Democrats have built a moral case against the filibuster in order to pass national voting and election reform.  The truth of the matter asserted does not matter.

Though voters in Georgia will have access to water while in line at the polls, Democrats claim it is suddenly illegal to provide water to voters.  Though Georgia has expanded the number of weekends for early voting, Democrats have fixated on the overall reduction in days, which is still more than many states.  They have danced around tying absentee ballots to photo identification because it is widely popular.  They disrupted Governor Brian Kemp’s signing of the bill into law then had media sympathizers who condemned the events of January 6 now make heroes of the disruptors and protestors in Georgia.  They want an economic boycott to punish the state.

The Washington Post reports Joe Biden lied about the Georgia law.  He claimed it reduced voting times.  It does not.  The Post notes “the law did make some changes to early voting. But experts say the net effect was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them.”  

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove notes Georgia actually has far more favorable voting terms than many Democrat states.  Rove points out 15 mostly Democratic states are more restrictive on absentee ballots than Georgia.  The progressive bastions of Connecticut and Mr. Biden’s home state of Delaware have no early voting at all.  Also, “New Jersey requires a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number for online voter registration, while Virginia requires both a photo ID card and your Social Security number. California—hardly a red stronghold—also requires ID to register.”

Democrats in Georgia are barely even talking about the Georgia law tying absentee ballots to photo identification.  Until now, Georgia matched signatures on absentee ballot envelopes with voter registration cards, which over time could differ wildly.  Now, Georgia will require voters provide the number and birth date on their state issued photo id card and give voters such a card for free if needed.

According to polling from Honest Elections, voter ID requirements remain hugely popular.  “Most voters (64%) want to strengthen voting safeguards to prevent fraud, rather than eliminate them to make voting “easier.” Fifty-one percent of Black voters and 66% of Hispanics agree, as do 59% of Urban voters and 61% of Independents. Only 21% want to make voting “easier” by getting rid of the precautionary measures that prevent fraud.”

Voter ID requirements are popular across racial lines.  “Some politicians and progressive activists frequently malign voter ID laws as discriminatory, but by huge margins both Black and Hispanic voters favor them (for Black voters, 64% vs. 22%; for Hispanic voters, 78% vs. 16%). Similarly, 64% of Black voters, 77% of Hispanics, and 76% of low- income voters reject the notion that showing an ID is a “burden,” despite frequent claims from the left.”

Much of the media, sympathetic to the left, has allowed the lies and misrepresentations to fester.  But it truly is not about the election law.  It is about the filibuster.  They must claim injustice in Georgia to attack Senators Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema, two Democrat obstacles to the filibuster, as stalwarts of that injustice.  They must elevate the Georgia legislation to a modern American sin tied to America’s original sin that they might then convince the American people their cause is just, moral, and righteous.

In the past five years, Democrats used the filibuster with gusto.  Even the Biden Administration claims the filibuster has been abused in the past few years, though they ignore mentioning Democrats were the abusers.  Instead, they have sought to build the intellectual case that the filibuster has always and only been used by racists to stop the advance of racial equity in the United States.  The facts do not matter.  The moral crusade matters.

In fact, the filibuster was first used on March 5, 1841, over the firing of the Senate printers.  It has nothing to do with civil rights or race.  Certainly, as those were contentious issues, the filibuster has been used against related legislation.  But to say it existed as a product of Jim Crow is just another instance of Democrats lying in order to build a moral case against it.  They will find their forgiveness for lying by the advance of their preferred legislation.

We are in a new era in American politics.  Politicians have long claimed moral ground to advance their preferred legislation.  But now, as the American media serves primarily as a mouthpiece for Democrats, the public is constantly subjected to lies and distortions by the press, the press’s “fact checkers,” and Democrats all wrapped in moral urgency and all designed to pass progressive legislation.

Georgia’s new election law is a modest, reasonable reform package.  Unfortunately for Georgia, the Democrats will distort it in their effort to end the filibuster and bring about their heaven on earth.