McCain (“Lucy”) the maverick strikes again, this time on Obamacare
John McCain is an odd duck who infuriates the right. The term he loves for himself is “maverick,” the definition of which is “an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party.”
True to form, he has now indicated he won’t go along with almost all of the other GOP senators in voting for the Obamacare reform bill known as Graham-Cassidy. What’s more, his main reason seems to be that no Democrats support it. From McCain:
We should not be content to pass health care legislation on a party-line basis, as Democrats did when they rammed Obamacare through Congress in 2009. If we do so, our success could be as short-lived as theirs when the political winds shift, as they regularly do. The issue is too important, and too many lives are at risk, for us to leave the American people guessing from one election to the next whether and how they will acquire health insurance. A bill of this impact requires a bipartisan approach.
Sure, John. And you know what I’d like? I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. And I’d also like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it company. And raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.
Have I left anything out?
Because the only thing that would make McCain’s dream come true is if the GOP passed a bill that the left likes. Which would make the GOP the left, essentially.
These days politics has become party-line these days, especially on Obamacare. That’s reality.
This is a bizarre act even for the bizarre McCain. It makes one wonder (and I’m saying this in a kindly way rather than a nasty one) if his brain tumor has affected his judgment. I think not, if only because this sort of mavericky, grandstanding, attention-getting, left-pleasing, holier-than-thou, come-let-us-reason-together act is vintage, classic McCain.
The bill had a chance before. Now it hangs by a very slender thread, a thread I believe will be broken.
If it is broken, a lot of people on the right will blame the entire GOP as betrayers. It may even sound the GOP’s death knell. No wonder the left loves John McCain.
Well, the entire GOP is not McCain, and the entire GOP has absolutely no control over him. I suppose you can blame them for that, but I don’t. If anyone is to blame (besides McCain, of course), it’s the people of Arizona who voted in the 2016 Arizona GOP primary for McCain rather than his more conservative challenger. It’s not as though they didn’t know what was coming:
After his [Senate] re-election in 2010, McCain adopted more orthodox conservative stances and attitudes and largely opposed actions of the Obama administration. By 2013, however, he had become a key figure in the Senate for negotiating deals on certain issues in an otherwise partisan environment. By early 2014, McCain’s apostasies were enough that the Arizona Republican Party formally censured him for having what they saw as a liberal record that had been “disastrous and harmful”…Tea Party leaders have said that they are “sick to death” of McCain and will oppose him.
The state of Arizona state law allows independents to vote in the GOP primary, although I don’t know whether that was a factor. During the campaign, McCain made Obamacare repeal the center of his re-election bid:
No doubt when McCain was campaigning against Obamacare during 2016, he thought that repealing it—which he was advocating—would have strong bipartisan support.
Not.
As Lucy said to Charlie Brown:
The bid’s open on the Maverick.
Neo: “I think not, if only because this sort of mavericky, grandstanding, attention-getting, left-pleasing, holier-than-thou, come-let-us-reason-together act is vintage, classic McCain.”
True , very true. McCain’s politics have been an enigma for many years. That he won the Republican nomination for President now seems amazing in hindsight. His political philosophy seems to trend toward favoring big government, yet he claims to be a fiscal hawk. He is for a muscular foreign policy, yet he is sometimes a supporter of progressive ideas in foreign policy. He wants bipartisanship, yet doesn’t even play well with members of his own party. He wants to be seen as a statesman, yet is often petty and vindictive in his actions.
His Navy service is one thing. His political record is erratic and maddening to those of us who supported him in 2008 and hoped that he was a true Republican. It makes me both angry and sad that it has come to this.
I’m waiting for some random Demoncrat or conservative that feels betrayed, to pop in here and defend McCain by citing how he is a war hero and his detractors, like here, are all physical cowards and couldn’t meet up to the standards of shining his shoes…
His political record is erratic and maddening to those of us who supported him in 2008 and hoped that he was a true Republican.
Most of the people involved supported Palin, not McCain.
McCain’s problem is that the Deep State has something on him. Probably has to do with defense contracts.
Please don’t hate me, but the fallacy i find in the notion that all soldiers are heroes for their respective countries is that implies the nazi and imperial japan soldiers were heroes for their countries too.
Clinically speaking, McCain has an invasive, 100% fatal glioblastoma involving his dominant frontal lobe, the seat of judgment and reason.
Ted Kennedy had the same, though in a different part of his brain.
Clinically speaking, does any sentient being believe McCain reads ANY bill at issue?
Clinically speaking, McCain should be removed from the Senate immediately, replaced instantly by an Arizonan.
He has no right to take us down with him, Senate cordiality be damned.
being some sort of war hero doesn’t necessary means you are a good person to be honest. look at Mao, this men scarified his family and even his most beloved son for his revolution but was he a good man?
You must had played played football or boxed or slept on the upper bunk bed in your youth to still believe ana navarro or John Mccain is conservative.
I wish McCain actually were a maverick; but if we to drop his pants you would see the State’s brand on his rump.
Ymar says,
“McCain’s problem is that the Deep State has something on him. Probably has to do with defense contracts.”
______
I’ve often wondered how exactly the Dems or the Obama admin. manages such perfect, iron-fisted, top-down control of all of their members amidst such blatant criminality.
One conjecture that occurred to me was that someone like Loretta Lynch, who had a decent track record before Obama’s DOJ, firstly wanted the job really badly, and secondly was required to turn over incriminating evidence of wrong doing by herself; in order to get the job.
Another possibility is that these folks are just bought. I’m kinda amazed that people don’t have the facts of the gov. Rod Blogojevich case burned into their memory. He was willing to sell Obama’s senate seat in return for a sinecure job that paid 0.33M$/year for 3 years. I.e. a million bucks. AND he stated, at the time, that pols do this stuff all the time.
The integrity of your gov. is worth $1M in 2009 dollars. Imagine that; how cheap that is!
Yet another possibility is that McCain like John Kerry is a trophy husband. Kerry accidently, on purpose, married not one, but two women worth in excess of $100M. I believe Cindy Lou Hensley McCain is worth at least $500M. Is she actually making these senate decisions?
Or maybe we’ll discover that Megan McCain, having left Fox News, will have her own talk show on NBC.
McCain has long been an “excitable boy” and a ‘maverick’ in his own mind. His service does not excuse his erratic political career. Time to leave John, retire and enjoy your last days well out of the limelight you crave like an addict craves his next fix.
“Maverick” is an artful way of explaining away ideological (let alone moral inconsistency / incoherency.
Now, and entirely hypothetically one understands… just how morally or ideologically consistent could a long-established powerful senator *who was always for sale* AND had long been deeply compromised by a whole bunch of life choices afford to be?
Like a whole bunch of things, it’s not exactly Rocket Science once one crushes one’s blinkers underfoot.
I like Frog’s point here, which ties in nicely with yours in the Plame post, above, Neo, that the media coverage of leftist issues and entities is so often “an epic journo-fail”.
McCain’s deadly condition is, as Frog says, one that afflicts his brain and yet, because his unpredictability usually leads him to stymie the programs of his own party and aid the left no-one in the MSM or the vaunted “resistance” ever calls for his removal from office on health grounds.
Yet when Trump, who is in office specifically because a majority of people in the majority of states demanded that changes be made to a few key policy areas, including repeal of Obamacare, exhibits the coherence to principle and the mental and moral strength to try to implement those changes the MSM never even question the bona fides of his unhinged partisan critics, (I’m looking at you Reps Green, Waters and the Black Congressional Caucus), as they call for his impeachment on the grounds of insanity, irascibility and/or general naziness.
Be you a judge, umpire, referee or journalist, when a party who must be impartial in order to do their job refuses to stand above and apart and instead puts on a jersey and wades into the fray as a partisan player you thereby lose all credibility and forfeit any and all claim to my attention.
That this situation of mass journo-fail came to pass long ago was proven by Anne Coulter in a short pithy headline: “We made Donald (F&$+@n!!) Trump President. What else can we do?”
While I suspect the brain tumor has affected McCain’s thinking, this particular choice of his may be an intentional, emotional response to his tumor: he may believe that he needs to “save” Obamacare before he dies for his legacy. He may believe (or been convinced by friends like Schumer) that he has the opportunity to do on last, great thing as Senator that will ensure his legacy along with such greats* as Ted Kennedy.
*Not a Ted K fan, but he seems to have been held in high esteem by his fellow long-serving Senators, such as McCain.
It’s personal.
McCain is putting it to Donald Trump.
His ‘reasoning’ wouldn’t survive a high school debate team.
Rand Paul’s logic is just as absurd.
It’s plain on the record that ANY repeal of 0-care will have to be by salami.
It’s that huge a project.
Repealing the compelled purchase is a LETHAL blow to 0-care…
And must set the stage for another slice, at least once per year, until some sanity is restored.
If I thought it were true that McCain was indeed intent on developing a solution to a problem in our society then I would respect him and his point of view. But he is not. He is engaged in his usual: “… mavericky, grandstanding, attention-getting, left-pleasing, holier-than-thou, come-let-us-reason-together act…”.
Heh. My mother honestly believes that the Lucy / Charlie Brown dynamic is how women are supposed to interact with men. “Why can’t you understand that making Lucy happy is more important than kicking a stupid football?”
And of course she can’t understand why I don’t even try to do nice things for her any more, as the only thing that makes her happy is seeing me try and fail.
TommyJay Says:
September 23rd, 2017 at 5:09 pm
Ever hear of Pizza gate? All kinds of stuff that go on in DC that people don’t want to know about.
Same for when Benghazi happened, before Snowden was on the national news. Some people accepted the propaganda about Benghazi. Others were going on about “they were told to stand down” even before people knew about Benghazi.
It’s the difference between insiders and outsiders, those who want the truth and those who want to take the blue pill and go back to sleep with their journolist promise of eternal American prosperity and exceptionalism.
Dave Says:
September 23rd, 2017 at 2:52 pm
Please don’t hate me, but the fallacy i find in the notion that all soldiers are heroes for their respective countries is that implies the nazi and imperial japan soldiers were heroes for their countries too.
A country’s heroes are basically mass murderers from another country’s point of view. One of our American snipers, the famous one Chris something, is well known because he just terminates jihadists from a certain distance.
To the Muslims or jihadists, that’s not a hero of their culture, that’s a demon or monster.
And from the Muslim pov, suicide bombers are their culture’s heroes, because they fight the enemies.
Being a hero either means being saddled with your nation’s or culture’s baggage and told to die for political convenience, or you are just really good at killing people.
That makes no difference whether you were on the losing side of the national wars in WW2 or on the winning side.
The fallacy of the military hero defense is not about what makes a hero, it’s about why it is irrelevant to a civilian dead republic that is dead set on going to hell. Americans act like war heroes are their military dictators. In point of fact, people like FDR used up “war heroes” basically as national propaganda, which is why some of them broke, when the nation told them to go on a Victory tour to sell war bonds when they know that the famous photo of the flag raising incident wasn’t really about them.
Southern slave lords also make use of General Lee and Nathan B Forrest as convenient political tools, war heroes, to control the public relations.
Americans or Westerners, have started using “hero” a little bit too often, although in many cases it is still relevant. It is most likely due to the Viking and other Anglo Saxon gene traits that still think political power has something to do with one’s individual martial might. That’s where the influence rests. Gold Star moms are an extension of that (Cindy Shee….’s moral influence on Bush II’s war policies).
McCain was re-elected for two reasons:
1) It looked like Hillary would win and we in AZ didn’t want to give her the Senate.
2) The GOPe made damned sure that nobody of any stature would run against him in the primary.
The only person who would, Kelli Ward, is now trouncing Jeff Flake in polls for 2018.
Oh, and Trump endorsed McCain in his race. It was at that point that I suspected Trump had made a deal with the GOPe. That suspicion continues due to Trump endorsements of Luther Strange and inexplicable retention of personnel like Sessions and Koskinen.