Senate Republicans invoked the "nuclear option" after the April6 filibuster that prevented cloture. It failed to overcome a bipartisan filibuster in the Senate. However, all Democratic senators supported the proposal, which led McConnell to filibuster his own proposal. This means that 41 senators can make a filibuster happen. The Senate was moved to end their filibuster that week. This series of speeches was the first Senate filibuster. The amendment failed to reach the sixty senatorial votes necessary to overcome a Republican-led filibuster. The first Senate filibuster occurred in 1837. An alternative to abstentionism was obstructionism, including the use of filibuster. The Democrats agreed and the filibuster ended. The bill failed to get the sixty votes needed to overcome a filibuster. In 2011 he introduced a bill to reform the filibuster. Procedural measures were used to limit debate and prevent any potential filibuster. The French constitution gives the government two options to defeat such a filibuster. Feingold led a filibuster against renewal of the act.