Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., plans to force debate and votes on breaking the filibuster late Wednesday night, and the move has earned his office a fruit basket from Senate Republicans.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee sent the fruit basket to Schumer, ostensibly thanking him for putting vulnerable 2022 midterm senators in the Democratic Party on record with a vote on the filibuster.
''Thanks Chuck - NRSC,'' the note read with the edible arrangement in a photo outside Schumer's office on Wednesday.
Schumer vowed Tuesday night to force a single breaking for the Senate's 60-vote filibuster to pass Democrats' election reform bills. The breaking of the filibuster is a polarizing topic; Democrats staunchly defended the need to keep the 60-vote threshold during the Trump administration.
''When Chuck Schumer promised to put every single senator – including known filibuster-dodger Mark Kelly – on the record by voting to abolish the filibuster, the NRSC made a promise of its own: 'We'll send him a gift basket or something,''' the NRSC wrote in a statement.
''Promise made. Promise kept. Eat your heart out, Chuck.''
That statement linked to another statement on Kelly, D-Ariz., whom pundits see facing a stiff Republican challenge for his seat in November.
''Mark Kelly finally admitted the truth about the filibuster (and about being nothing more than a lackey for Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer): Kelly supports abolishing the filibuster to pass a radical, far-left agenda that will completely transform Arizona and the country,'' the NRSC wrote in a separate press release.
''After dodging the question 16 times, the NRSC extends its gratitude to Chuck Schumer for finally forcing Mark Kelly to give a straight answer.''
Kelly was one of a few of the newest Democratic senators not to have already been criticized by Republicans for past comments defending the filibuster rule.
''Coward Mark Kelly has finally admitted that he would rather appease progressive activists and Democrat leadership in Washington than stand up for Arizonans,'' NRSC press secretary Katharine Cooksey added in a statement. ''Kelly is no moderate. He is a far-left senator who will do whatever Joe Biden and Washington Democrat leadership tell him to in order to pass a radically liberal agenda.''
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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