With voting rights on the line, some senators flub history test

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Rachel Maddow MSNBC
@maddow
"Senator Manchin told Fox News' Chad Pergram that the filibuster has been 'the tradition of the Senate' for 232 years.

No.

When the Senate was created 232 years ago, the filibuster did not exist. The institution functioned this way for generations."

With voting rights on the line, some senators flub history test
Sen. Joe Manchin reportedly said the filibuster has been "the tradition of the Senate" for 232 years. That's not even close to being true.
msnbc.com
2:08 PM · Jan 11, 2022

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/voting-rights-line-some-senators-flub-history-test-n1287295

This past summer, as the debate over Senate reform grew louder in Democratic circles, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema insisted that the existing rules remain intact, regardless of the consequences. The Arizona Democrat argued, among other things, that the chamber's filibuster rules were "created as a tool to bring together members of different parties to find compromise."

Senators are certainly entitled to their own opinions, but they're not entitled to just make up historical details that don't exist — and Sinema's argument about how the filibuster was created was just spectacularly and unquestionably untrue. It's not a matter of perspective: The historical record simply proved the Arizonan wrong.

Yesterday, the Senate's other Democratic opponent of overhauling the filibuster rules ran into similar trouble.

Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia reportedly told Fox News' Chad Pergram that the filibuster has been "the tradition of the Senate" for 232 years. According to the Capitol Hill correspondent's tweet, the conservative Democrat added, "That's what we've always had for 232 years."

*snip*