Many Democrats are hoping that the death of the commission may bring about the death of the filibuster itself, and allow them to legislate without needing ten Republican votes that will probably never materialise
IT WAS THE perfect spectacle of legislative dysfunction. On May 28th the Senate rejected a painstakingly negotiated bipartisan bill that would have set up a commission to study the storming of the Capitol building by incensed Donald Trump supporters on January 6th. Though the vote was 54 in favour and 35 opposed , the measure technically failed, because a filibuster—ostensibly the threat of debating a bill to death—requires 60 votes to surmount.
Yet some images simply cannot recede from collective consciousness. The spectacle of a rabid mob overrunning the defences of the Capitol and storming its chambers at the behest of a defeated president desperate to retain power by whatever lie he could tell—this was an attack on American democracy itself. That was the impetus behind a bipartisan commission to study how it happened, just as one was created to examine the September 11th attacks in 2001.
Things were no better in the other chamber. After Mr Trump excoriated the “35 wayward Republicans” who voted for the bill in the House, Mr McConnell aggressively whipped against the bill’s passage in the Senate . Only six Republicans in the Senate voted in favour of the commission.
, a staunchly conservative Republican representative, from her leadership post for the sin of not adopting the requisiteThe odds that concerned Republicans can reverse, or even stall, their party’s anti-democratic slide look remote. Mr Trump remains the party’s de facto leader, and barring a health crisis , says he plans to run again. He may well win; his party remains in thrall to him.