'Hope I’m wrong': Scholar panics that GOP poised to upend 220-year rule to gain more power

President Donald Trump pledged over the weekend to veto all legislation until Congress passes his voter-requirements bill, the SAVE Act — and, in doing so, may have set off a chain of events that could compel Senate Republicans to overturn a 220-year rule and grant themselves unprecedented power, one congressional scholar warned Tuesday.

Top Republicans have grown increasingly fearful that their party may end up losing control of the Senate in the midterm elections this November. And, with Trump now vowing to block all bills until the passage of the SAVE Act, Senate Republicans, according to congressional scholar Norm Ornstein, might eliminate the filibuster out of desperation to “save their own skins.”

“If Senate Republicans believe that they could lose their majority in the Senate, they will in a nanosecond change their rules to jam through the SAVE Act so that their voter suppression can guarantee them a victory even when the vast majority of voters are opposed to them,” Ornstein told The New Republic’s Greg Sargent on the “The Daily Blast” podcast.

“So I’m a little more worried about their being able to do this – not because Donald Trump is bloviating about it, but because they’ll do anything to save their own skins, even if it destroys democracy.”

The SAVE Act, which both Ornstein and Sargent described as a form of “voter suppression,” would require all Americans to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote. Critics argue the measure could burden eligible voters, noting that 52% of registered voters lack an unexpired passport and 11% do not have access to their birth certificate, documents they would need to obtain at additional time and expense.

As for the filibuster, Republicans have been hesitant to eliminate the 220-year-old Senate rule, which currently requires most legislation to receive 60 votes to pass in the 100-member chamber. If faced with the threat of losing their seats this November, Ornstein predicted, most GOP senators would cave and support eliminating the longstanding rule, though he noted: “I hope I’m wrong.”

“We’ve looked at approval ratings for this president, including for the core issues on immigration, on the economy and the like, and he’s in the toilet and Republicans are in the toilet,” Ornstein said.

“[Republicans] are increasingly concerned in the Senate that not only do they have to worry about seats that would otherwise be in play, like Susan Collins in Maine, but they’re now in trouble in Ohio, potentially in Texas, maybe even in a few other states like Montana, where they otherwise would have felt secure, or Nebraska.”