AFP using grassroots events in crucial nations to place pressure on moderate Senate Democrats to oppose party’s push to scrap filibuster
EXCLUSIVE — In his effort to protect that the Senate’s filibuster, Tim Phillips says with the country so closely split, now isn’t the time”to jam however” a partisan agenda.
Phillips, the president of the influential conservative advocacy organization Americans for Prosperity (AFP), is now crisscrossing the nation, as part of his group’s”Save the Filibuster, Save America” effort to put pressure on moderate Democratic senators to oppose their party’s drive to scrap the legislative filibuster, which requires a 60 vote to pass most bills in the 100 member Senate.
“It’s a good thing for the nation. The Senate is meant to be a heating saucer,” Phillips emphasized in an exclusive interview with Fox News Thursday evening in Salem, New Hampshire.
AFP has also established in recent weeks a six-figure social media and radio advertising campaign to put more pressure in the Democratic senators. Sen Chris Coons of Delaware can be targeted in the paid media push.
“We’ve got to make certain that Sen. Hassan and another Democratic senators know that no matter what folks on the extreme left are saying, that normal individuals back in their states do not want to find that partisanship and the extreme legislation that will happen if they kill the filibuster,” Phillips argued.
And he worried that”this country is much more closely divided than anytime arguably because the post-World War Two era. That is not the opportunity to shake through this large, intense agenda. Now’s the time to actually find some common ground. That’s what we’re asking them to perform.”
Scrapping the filibuster, a significant objective of the advanced wing of the Democratic party, was an often debated topic throughout the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. Together with the Senate currently divided 50-50 between both major parties — the Democrats control the chamber due to the tie breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris — the filibuster is preventing President Biden and congressional Democrats from passing many of the sweeping measures they would like to enact.
The push to scrap the filibuster was reignited after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the leading Republican in the room, said earlier this month that”100 percent of our attention is on quitting this new administration.”
Responding to McConnell, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts tweeted that”the Constitution doesn’t say anything about it requiring a super-majority of 60 senators to pass a bill”
Warren, a progressive champion who ran to the White House at 2020, highlighted that”it’s time to get rid of the filibuster so Mitch McConnell doesn’t get a veto over the will of the people.”
“We’re thanking him, encouraging him, because he has been fairly forthright in saying we are not moving in this way,” Phillips said of Manchin.
