We Forgot This Senator Supports the Filibuster, Throwing a Wrench Into Dems' Future Plans

Angus King caucuses with the Democrats, votes with them on nearly everything that matters, and yet somehow the assumption took hold that he'd go along with nuking the filibuster the second his side gets the gavel back. He hasn't. He's said so, repeatedly, and apparently nobody on that side of the aisle bothered to check the math before penciling in a simple-majority future. That's not a small oversight. It's the kind of thing that happens when a party gets so certain of its own righteousness that it forgets to count votes.

Here's the part Republicans need to sit with: this is a temporary gift, not a permanent shield. King's position is a personal conviction, not a rule written in stone, and convictions can move under enough pressure from leadership and the base. The GOP has been burned before by assuming an institutional norm will hold forever just because it held last week. Relying on one senator's principles to save you from majority rule is not a strategy, it's a bet.

So take the opening. If the filibuster is genuinely on borrowed time the moment Democrats retake the chamber, then the honest move is to stop pretending restraint is a virtue that only one side has to practice. Pass what needs passing now, while the votes exist and the rules still favor deliberation. Waiting around for the other guy to keep being reasonable is not a governing philosophy. Whatever comes of the SAVE America Act or anything else on the docket, the lesson from King's stand is simple: don't build your future on an assumption you never bothered to verify.