I’m kidding. Sort of. Recently, I noted that Republicans could end the government shutdown immediately in one of two ways: 1) enter meaningful and binding negotiations with senate Democrats; 2) end the filibuster.

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader, Republican John Thune gave the following explanation as to why Republicans don’t want to end (‘nuke’) the filibuster*:

If the Democrats had won the majority, they probably would’ve tried to nuke the filibuster. And then you’d have four new senators from Puerto Rico and DC, you’d have a packed Supreme Court, you’d have abortion on demand…

Stop when you get to the bad part Mr. Senator! Seriously, there are two lessons from this. First, the Republicans are still worried that Democrats will regain power, despite the fascists’ best efforts. Second, it is possible for Democrats to have nice things if they end the filibuster–and Democratic primary voters will need to hold Democratic senators’ feet to the fire to get them to end the filibuster. Some of them won’t like that because it would mean they wouldn’t be able to avoid hard votes any more, but fuck ’em, that’s the job.

*While legislation is passed by majority vote in the Senate, for a bill to brought to a vote, it first must pass cloture (a vote to end discussion about the bill). That requires sixty (out of a hundred) votes, meaning any of the wonderful legislation Thune proposed would need (highly unlikely) Republican support to make it to the floor.