One Girl Revolution

Democrats should also use the Senate’s rules encouraging free and open debate to take advantage of every opportunity to press Republicans directly and publicly on why they continue to cover for President Trump instead of holding him accountable. Senators can and should flood the floor with speeches and hold frequent news conferences on Trump’s ties to Russia. But they can also engage Republicans directly on the Senate floor and force them to publicly defend their blind obedience to the most conflicted and compromised president in recent history.
 
For instance, McConnell delivers opening remarks every day during “leader time,” when the Senate convenes every morning. The rules allow one senator to ask any other senator who is speaking on the floor to “yield for a question.” Democrats can make a point of asking McConnell to yield for a question about why, for instance, he is still trying to cast doubt on the intelligence community by stating that Russia “may have” hacked our election in his speech Wednesday — when the entire U.S. intelligence community concluded in January that Russia was the perpetrator.
 
 

Democrats can repeat this tactic every time a Republican senator is speaking on the floor. Engaging fellow senators in debate and asking them to defend their positions in public would also revive the Senate’s tradition of being free, open and extemporaneous debate, instead of the place it has devolved into in recent decades where senators mindlessly read speeches written by their staff to an empty chamber. Republicans can dodge reporters in the halls of the Capitol or refuse to hold town halls back home, but it is far more difficult for them to dodge their fellow senators on the floor. And if they refuse to yield for questions, they will demonstrate that they are unable to publicly defend their position. In an environment where polls show the public yearning for Congress to act as a check on Trump, the American people will get to judge whether Republicans are fulfilling that role for themselves, with the unblinking eye of C-SPAN recording it all in real time.