Fox Digs Up Clip of Obama Defending Filibuster in 2005: One Party Shouldn’t ‘Change the Rules in the Middle of the Game’

By Sarah RumpfMar 25th, 2021, 10:56 pm
 

As Democrats strategize to pass legislation with only a narrow majority in the Senate, the debate about reforming or even abolishing the filibuster has led both sides to dig up old video clips of partisans arguing the opposite angle they’re taking in 2021. The latest round in the hypocrisy-palooza comes from former President Barack Obama, back in 2005 when he was a Senator from Illinois.

The April 13, 2005 clip from Obama’s speech from the Senate floor was played Thursday on Special Report with Bret Baier. Anchor Bret Baier introduced the clip, saying they had “just dug this out Sunday.” Said Obama in defense of the filibuster then, when the Senate was under Republican control:

The American people, they sent us here to be their voice. They understand those voices can at times become loud and argumentative, but they hope we can disagree without being disagreeable. And at the end of the day, they expect to both parties to work together to get the people’s business done. What they don’t expect is for one party, be it Republican or Democrat, to change the rules in the middle of the game so that they can make all of the decisions while the other party is told to sit down and keep quiet.

At the funeral of Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) last July, Obama had called the filibuster a “Jim Crow relic.”

“We can play hypocrisy sound bites on all parties all day long, this happened to stick out to us,” Baier said, accurately describing the fight in the Senate that has been going on for years. 

In 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) invoked the so-called “nuclear option” to reduce the number of votes to defeat a filibuster from 60 to 51 for Cabinet appointments. In 2017, after the election of former President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) expanded that rule for Supreme Court nominations as well.

Then-Minority Leader, current Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) publicly expressed his misgivings over the changes to the filibuster at that time, and it’s been very easy to find clips of various Democrats and Republicans defending or attacking the filibuster, depending on who’s in control at the time.

Fox News commentator and former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) remarked that both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had both defended the filibuster when they were Democratic Senators.

“I don’t want to beat a dead horse, Bret, although it doesn’t hurt the horse,” Gowdy cracked. “I mean the journalists should have been asking these questions today. If it is a racist relic, and when did that happen? Obama supported it, Senator Biden supported it — when did it become racist?”

Watch the video above, via Fox News.

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Sarah Rumpf - Contributing Editor

Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law & Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on the BBC, MSNBC, NewsNation, Fox 35 Orlando, Fox 7 Austin, The Young Turks, The Dean Obeidallah Show, and other television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe.