Mostly disagree. There is some truth to your statement, but if there weren’t a budget reconciliation loophole in the filibuster rule for tax reform, do you see them nuking the filibuster to get something that they universally supported? I don’t. They’d have been perfectly happy to have zero legislative achievements and keep the filibuster in place.
The only reason they nuked the remainder of the judicial filibuster was because of the preposterously selective way in which Harry Reid left in place for SCOTUS nominees that only the Democrats had a history of using. If he hadn’t touched it, we’d have two Merrick Garland-type replacements in there instead of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
Senators love the filibuster because it gives them more power and leverage for political favors, which helps incumbents get reelected. R’s also seem to think that because the D’s didn’t completely eliminate it during the Obama years, it will be around forever to enable them to block future leftist legislation. Fact is, if Obama hadn’t lost the House in 2010, they would have eliminated it already as they will undoubtedly do next time they hold all the cards.
If they had eliminated the filibuster sometime in 2017 or 2018 and still lost the House, I suspect that 9 days into the shutdown McConnell would have found 50 votes for the wall budget before the new congress was seated with no other end to the shutdown in sight.
I do.