Senate GOP eyes blame game as Trump-backed SAVE Act heads for defeat

Senate Republicans know that Trump-backed voter ID legislation is doomed to fail and are trying to find a way to pin the blame on Senate Democrats.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., plans to bring the bill to the floor next week, but Republicans won't take the route of launching into a talking filibuster despite pressure from President Donald Trump and the GOP base to do so.

"We don't have the votes either to proceed, get on a talking filibuster, nor to sustain one if we got on it," Thune said. "But that is just a function of math, and there isn't anything I can do about that. I mean, I understand the president's got a passion to see this issue addressed, as we all do."

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While the end result after an exhaustive marathon of debate would allow Republicans to pass the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act at a simple-majority threshold, Thune has time and again warned that the votes aren't there among Republicans to block Democratic amendments that could completely reshape the bill.

Still, Trump and a sphere of online conservative voices are demanding that the bill pass at any cost. Trump warned that if it does not, Republicans will fall flat in the upcoming midterm election cycle. 

"It will guarantee the midterms. If you don't get it, big trouble," Trump told House Republicans at their annual policy retreat earlier this week. 

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are nearly unified in their opposition to the bill. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., reiterated his opposition to the SAVE America Act and charged that it was legislation geared toward "destroying" and "purging" voter rolls across the country.

"This is a bill that destroys the country," Schumer said. "And it is not about showing ID when you show up to vote."

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The other option for the GOP would be to nuke the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act, which some argue Democrats would do anyway when they eventually regain control of the upper chamber.

There is not an appetite among Republicans to blow up the filibuster either.

"I suggest our first goal will be to try and pass it, but I understand how difficult that is, and I'm sympathetic with the position of not ending the filibuster," Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Fox News Digital. "But short of that, our next goal ought to be to make sure the Democrats get blamed, because they're the ones that are truly blocking this."

A likely strategy that Republicans will turn to is in the spirit of the talking filibuster with the marathon of debate and amendment votes that process would yield. A key difference is that Republicans would stack the deck with their own amendments, forcing Democrats to take vote after vote. 

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Johnson, who, along with Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rick Scott, R-Fla., met with Trump to push for the SAVE America Act, said that instead of a straight up-or-down vote on the bill, Republicans could flood the floor with amendments in a genuine bid to reshape the bill. Then would come a final vote at the end of the amendment flurry. 

Those add-ons to the bill would include tweaks that Trump has requested, like nixing mail-in ballots save for certain exceptions, banning men from women's sports and halting transgender surgical procedures on minors.

"We're getting the Democrats on record voting, 'Oh, you want to keep mutilating children on the altar of transgenderism,'" Johnson said.

Another route to pass the bill could be through the budget reconciliation process, which Republicans used to ram Trump's "big, beautiful bill" through Congress last year.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., has been the most vocal proponent of that tactic. But in order for the SAVE America Act to survive the reconciliation route, it would have to pass muster under the Byrd Rule, which requires that anything crammed into a reconciliation package have a budgetary effect.

Kennedy argued the best way to counter that is to lawyer up.

"It really comes down to what the [Senate] parliamentarian says, and I would get the best minds I could find to try to draft a provision that would survive Byrd," Kennedy said. "When you argue or debate with the parliamentarian, you've got to be ready. You can't just walk in there and pull it out of your orifices."