Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) on “Special Report” said there is deep resistance within the GOP to altering filibuster rules,

BRET BAIER, HOST: I don’t want to dwell on this too much, but some of your colleagues say the talking filibuster is the way to go. Here’s the Utah Republican Senator, Mike Lee. SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UT) This is something that 85 percent of the American people want. So if a small handful of Democratic lawmakers want to interfere with the will of the American people, let them earn it. Make them speak. Make them stand on the Senate floor and explain why in front of all the American people. They won’t last very long. This is something that we can do without changing a single rule or a single precedent. And it’s something that we must do in this instance. BAIER: So why, in specific detail, are you convinced that a talking filibuster doesn’t work? SENATE MAJORITY LEADER JOHN THUNE (R-SD): Well, first off and foremost, because we don’t have the votes for it. And that’s — again, that’s — it’s a simple function of the math in the Senate. It would take — even a talking filibuster would take 51 votes. We don’t have 51 votes for that in the United States Senate. BAIER: But why is that? Why — why are Republican… THUNE: Well, I mean, I think… BAIER: … colleagues not going to force the issue? THUNE: I think… BAIER: The president’s obviously putting his foot here, saying this is the most important thing that needs to come out of this Congress. THUNE: Right. And I know people don’t like to hear this, but the talking filibuster, you know, it takes you back kind of basically to the 1800s. You go back to the 19th Century and the way things were done in the Senate. And we can’t find an example in modern Senate history where a piece of legislation passed via the talking filibuster. But in the meantime, what it does do is it… BAIER: But it would say, if they got tired and exhausted, it would be 51 votes. THUNE: It would be at 51 votes. But between now and then, and you’re talking unlimited debate, and any time an amendment, for example, is offered and fails, if it gets tabled, you start all over. You reset the clock. And it really favors the minority. When Harry Reid was majority leader, Democrat (ph) leader in the Senate, same thing with Chuck Schumer, they both looked at doing this and opted against it. What it would force us to do in the Senate is vote on all kinds of Democrat (ph) amendments, whether Epstein or blocking President Trump’s tariffs or, you know, Obamacare subsidies. You can go right down the list, war powers, abortion, there are a whole bunch of votes that would be — that we would be forced to take, not only really hard political votes for a lot of our colleagues, but also votes that in the end, some of which would pass and go on the bill. And once issues like that are attached to this bill… BAIER: It’s a poison pill. THUNE: It’s a poison pill. So there — and we’ve looked at — believe me, we’ve — we’ve shot this out. We’ve gamed it out. We’ve done all the contingencies and said, is there a way in the end that we can get an outcome? Because to me, that’s what it’s about. If you can achieve a policy outcome, yeah, then the process we’re willing to look at. But in the end, this is about really having a debate about the substance. And the substance of this bill is whether or not people who are in this country illegally, non-citizens, ought to be able to vote in American elections. BAIER: The other side of this argument says, if Democrats take control, they are taking out the filibuster. THUNE: Right. BAIER: There’s just a sense that that’s — they sing from the same sheet of music. They vote a lot together, much more than Republicans do. Why, on this issue, even narrowly, can’t you do that? THUNE: Well, the — the legislative filibuster, as distinct from the talking filibuster, we don’t have the votes for either. We don’t have the votes for the talking filibuster. But the legislative filibuster, we really don’t have the votes. I mean, that is a… BAIER: Because you lose — lose like five or six Republicans? THUNE: Oh, way more than that. On the — on the legislative filibuster right now, I mean, without — I don’t want to handicap it here in the public, but it’s a — that is a very deeply held view by a lot of Senate Republicans that if the Democrats want to go there, if at some point they decide they want to steal the car, fine, but we’re not going to hand them the keys to do it, and then own all the things that we would enable, all the things the Democrats want to do once they nuke the filibuster. But, again, that’s a hypothetical. We don’t know if it will happen. If they get the majorities in the House and the Senate and the White House at some point in the future, maybe they go down that path. We don’t know for sure. But I know that right now there are a majority of Republican senators who don’t want to go down this path.

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