Many politicians specialize in a glaring command of the obvious. Others find their talent in fake indignation. Both types had a chance to indulge in the aforementioned practices over a Monday mic slip by Senator Ben Cardin, Democrat of Maryland.

FNC: “Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., was caught on a hot mic telling Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg that the budget reconciliation process would ‘most likely’ be needed to get an infrastructure package into the end zone. Budget reconciliation is a parliamentary procedure that gained recognition as the Democrats looked for an avenue to get their COVID-19 relief bill past a Senate filibuster and to President Joe Biden’s desk. It allows lawmakers to sidestep Senate filibusters. So no 60-vote requirement there. All you need is to find a simple majority to pass whatever bill you insert into a budget reconciliation package. While at a Monday press conference featuring Buttigieg, Cardin was caught on a C-SPAN mic saying that Democrats will use reconciliation to push an infrastructure package through Congress. Cardin also told Buttigieg that the infrastructure bill will be constructed in a ‘similar’ way to the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill that President Biden signed last week.”

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“Ultimately, it’s going to be put together similar to how the American Rescue Plan was put together …,” Cardin was caught saying to Buttigieg, both festooned in their political gimp masks. “Most likely, we’re going to have to use reconciliation.”

Sen. Ben Cardin, as heard on a C-SPAN mic, tells Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg that Democrats will “most likely have to use reconciliation” on an infrastructure package as they did with the Covid relief bill.

“The Republicans will be with you to a point, and then—“ pic.twitter.com/d4Pc49WlIl

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) March 15, 2021

Everybody knows this is true. It was true the second the Democrats took the Senate because Donald Trump couldn’t keep his nose out of the Georgia runoffs. So for Cardin to mention it to Buttigieg was a minor thing, a throwaway line regarding the obvious. But you would think it was an admission of who killed JFK (Democrat mob pals), given the Republican uproar.

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Various GOP members of the House and Senate decried the end to any idea of bipartisanship. Hold on. Just when did the Democrats really mean to play by bipartisan rules, aside from the pablum for public consumption? That’s right, never. It recalls Leonid Brezhnev’s line to Alexander Dubcek after the Soviets crushed the Prague Spring. “Don’t talk to me about socialism, Alexander. What we have, we hold.” Such as it is now with Democrat power. Republicans are foolish to think anything else and more foolish to whine about it.