The Left’s SAVE Act Scare Campaign Doesn’t Hold Up
Alexander Muse – There is a reliable pattern in American politics. When Democrats cannot win an argument on its merits, they reach for fear. Not the kind of fear that emerges from honest risk analysis, but the manufactured kind, carefully wrapped in a sympathetic story, deployed at the precise moment when a vote is scheduled and the stakes are high.
The argument need not survive scrutiny. It only needs to survive long enough to generate a headline, shift a few poll numbers, and muddy the deliberative waters. Once the bill passes or fails, the story quietly disappears, and no one is ever asked to account for it. Continue reading
Alexander Muse – Senate Majority Leader John Thune has argued that passing the SAVE America Act in the face of a threatened talking filibuster would be procedurally impossible. His reasoning is simple. Senate rules, he says, allow unlimited debate and unlimited amendments. If both claims were true, the conclusion would follow. A determined minority could bury the bill in speeches and amendments until the majority surrendered.
Alexander Muse – The political maneuver that unfolded this week in the Texas Senate runoff is best understood through a simple analogy. Imagine a hunter placing a steel trap along a narrow path in the forest. The trap is not hidden by complexity. It is hidden by inevitability. The hunter knows that if the animal continues down the path, it will eventually step into the mechanism. The trap works not because it deceives the animal but because the path offers no other direction.