With Republicans now in control of the Senate, prominent conservatives are starting to speak out in favor of ending the filibuster. Hugh Hewitt floated the possibility here at the Washington Examiner, and now Charles Krauthammer has outright advocated abolishing the filibuster. This would be a terrible mistake.

However tempting it may be in the short term to scrap the filibuster now that Republicans hold the Senate, in the long term, it would be a disaster for conservatism, removing one of the last remaining barriers to the United States becoming a European socialist welfare state. There’s a good reason why ending the filibuster has become a cause of many leading progressives in recent years.