At 10:15 on Wednesday morning, Democratic senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon finally yielded the floor after delivering a 15-hour speech voicing his party's opposition to President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.
Merkley spoke about many things during his marathon speech on the floor of the Senate, such as Gorsuch's distaste for class-action lawsuits and the SCOTUS nominee's alleged partiality toward corporations and big business. To drive home his points, Sen. Merkley also relied upon the use of visual aids, speaking in front of an easel with enlarged portions of the Constitution.
One thing Sen. Merkley forgot to talk about during his epic talk-a-thon on the Senate floor, however, was "Reform the Filibuster"-- the petition website he created in 2013 calling on American citizens to demand an end to 15-hour epic talk-a-thons on the Senate floor.
Merkley's website claims that filibusters 'hijack' the Senate
The website, which was paid for by Jeff Merkley For Oregon, urges visitors to "end the political games that have hijacked the U.S. Senate" by signing the petition. It is unclear how many signatures the anti-filibuster petition garnered since its inception.
"We're calling on the Senate to do the right thing -- reform the filibuster and get back to work," states the Oregon legislator in the introduction to his website.
The hypocrisy is astounding
Sen. Merkley was a member of a cadre of liberal lawmakers who waged a war against the Senate's filibuster rules in 2013. Merkley, along with senators Tom Udall of New Mexico, Tom Harkin of Iowa and then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, launched a campaign calling for a major overhaul in the way filibusters are conducted.
One of the goals of Merkley's anti-filibuster campaign, according to The Hill, was to "expedite executive and judicial-branch nominations."
“The filibuster, once used only on issues of personal principle, is now used regularly as an instrument of partisan politics,” Merkley stated to The Hill in January of 2013. “It hurts our ability to take on the big challenges we face as Americans. And we need to fix it."
