President Trump is in a bind right now. Voters are going Democrat in no small part because Democrats have shut down the government, not even allowing continuing resolutions to ensure that welfare recipients on SNAP benefits get their payment cards filled. To them, free health care for illegal aliens is more important. 

Now the airports are shutting down, and flights are being delayed. Many voters are blaming President Trump againn for assorted small plane crashes around the country as well as monster delays at airports. The phony claims of Democrats stoke those fears.

The military has no money to pay troops and local news reports say that military families are lining up at food banks.

While the fault here is the Democrats, Trump is taking the fire. So not surprisingly, he's changing tactics in the face of this wall of obstruction, asking GOP Senators to scrap the filibuster, to lower the threshhold for passage of some kind of budgetary bill to keep the government running.

According to The Hill:

Senate Republican support for eliminating the filibuster is picking up momentum after President Trump invited members of the Senate GOP conference to the White House for a breakfast meeting Wednesday to demand they reform the Senate’s rules in order to reopen the government.

Changing the Senate’s rules with a simple majority vote to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for advancing most legislation would be very controversial — so controversial that it’s called the “nuclear option” — but a growing number of Senate Republicans are calling for a review of the matter.

Ostensibly, Trump's argument is that Democrats are already planning to scrap it once they regain power, so might as well strike first to delay the possibility that they will retake power.

But instead of seeing "what time it is," as New York Post columnist Miranda Devine put it, the Senate RINO contingent is saying 'no.'

According to Politico:

“I’ve said before there are not the votes there,” said Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), adding that Trump “could have some sway with members, but I just know where the math is on this issue in the Senate.”

Privately Republicans acknowledge they aren’t anywhere close to having the votes to change the rules. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) pointed to the number of GOP senators who have recently backed the filibuster, adding that Trump is “very attuned to the political realities.”

Several GOP senators also reiterated Wednesday they would not support a change. Opposition from just four of the 53 Senate Republicans could stop Trump’s demand cold.

“I’d never vote to nuke the filibuster,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters.

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) similarly said in an interview, “I have long said I don’t support nuking the filibuster.” And Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a member of Senate GOP leadership, called the filibuster an “important aspect of how the Senate operates.”

It's the stupidest, most George-Bushian, thank-you-may-I-have-another response that can be imagined.

It's why the Republicans secure weak majorities and constantly get thrown out of power.

Fact is, Democrats have already changed the rules of the political game by lunging for tyranny of the majority which is what ending the filibuster would do, too.

Gov. Gavin Newsom got the voters to approve his Proposition 50 measure in a naked bid to disenfranchise Republican voters, who amount to 45% of the state into virtually no representation, by gerrymandering the state as if it were Illinois in order to increase Democrat representation in Congress at the expense of California's few Republican representatives.

As a consequence, the rice farmers and lumberjacks of Northern California will have their representation in Congress decided by the hot-tub flakes of Marin County.

The Asian-American refugees from communism in Orange County will have their representatives decided by the woke white academics of Irvine.

The back-county desert ranchers of East San Diego County will get Ammar Campa-Najjar, the grandson of a Black September terrorist (whom he calls 'a legend') and whom they rejected earlier, as their representative in Congress, because the Democrats have decided.

Proposition 50, passed Tuesday, creates just that tyranny of the majority.

So what difference does it make if Republicans scrap the filibuster, it's the same thing, and the RINO resistance is just that failure to recognize what's in the wind now, and what Democrats are already miles ahead in this political game.

Why they would let their majority slide, and why they would allow President Trump's agenda to falter as the shutdown grinds on can only be some kind of lunacy known only to them. 

Democrats know very well that the shutdown is translating to political trouble for President Trump, which explains why they are now digging in their heels.

That Thune and company don't see any reason to change and any reason to end the shutdown can only suggest that they are way out of touch with the voters, or don't mind voting for a healthcare-for-illegals budget, caving in entirely to the leftist minority party.

That stinks in the extreme and points to the critical need to get these buffoons out of office for goodd.

Image: Photo illustration by Monica Showalter, with use of public domain images