Please leave your comments.
I’d particularly like to hear your thoughts on McCain. I may do an op-ed in another publication on why conservatives did not like McCain – shocking to the MSM! While I’ve seen a lot of interesting takes on McCain in the comment section of the piece below this one, any others you might want to leave in this thread that could help inform the piece – if I do it – would be appreciated.
Keith
President Trump Saturday tweeted his sympathy to the family of Sen. John McCain, who died Saturday at the age of 81, but left out any praise for the late senator himself.
My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain. Our hearts and prayers are with you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 26, 2018
McCain and Trump had long had a contentious relationship. Trump during the campaign questioned McCain’s heroism, and McCain cast the vote that sunk Trump-backed legislation to partially repeal Obamacare. McCain also withdrew his support for Trump late in the 2016 campaign.
Sen. John McCain has chosen to discontinue medical treatment, according to a statement released by his family.
The family said:
Last summer, Senator John McCain shared with Americans the news our family already knew: he had been diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma, and the prognosis was serious. In the year since, John has surpassed expectations for his survival. But the progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict. With his usual strength of will, he has now chosen to discontinue medical treatment.
Sen. John McCain Sunday undercut President Trump with a tweet aimed at allies who are sore that Trump refused to sign the G-7 joint statement
To our allies: bipartisan majorities of Americans remain pro-free trade, pro-globalization & supportive of alliances based on 70 years of shared values. Americans stand with you, even if our president doesn’t.
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) June 10, 2018
Trump, in fact, is doing exactly the kind of thing he was elected to do.
But McCain knows something about public opinion. It’s what kept him out of the White House and put Trump in it.
President Trump is continuing to assail Sen. John McCain, noting for at least the second time in recent days that McCain’s vote sank the Obamacare repeal effort in Congress.
….We had Repeal & Replace done (and the saving to our country of one trillion dollars) except for one person, but it is getting done anyway. Individual Mandate is gone and great, less expensive plans will be announced this month. Drug prices coming down & Right to Try!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2018
McCain betrayed Republican voters by not supporting the cause of Obamacare repeal, the exact thing that put Republicans in power and gave him his committee chairmanship. And I believe he did it out of personal animus toward Trump. With McCain, a lot of stuff is personal, even though in death he will be contrasted with Trump as a man of great principle and what the Republican party “should” be compared to Trump.
Of course, those doing the comparisons will be completely unaware of the contempt many conservatives have for McCain, despite his heroism many years ago, for positions he has taken on things like immigration, campaign finance reform, and Obamacare.
“John McCain is leading the fight to stop Obamacare,” a 2016 ad for his reelection campaign proclaimed.
Here is his leadership in action.
Maybe Trump is furious that McCain disinvited him to his funeral. Whatever, the man is close to his deathbed. And he did serve years ago while Trump did not. I often wonder how many people who could have been leaders of our country went to Vietnam, served, and died while others stayed home. Although I have also had veterans of the war tell me they don’t blame people for “staying out of all that shit.”
Either way, it’s time for Trump to leave McCain alone. He’s dying. It’s enough.
Now that’s a pretty good day at the office for a draft dodger.
Bill Clinton was asked by some reporter how he felt about a White House aide saying John McCain’s vote on President Trump’s CIA nominee didn’t matter because McCain is dying.
You can see he didn’t intend to answer any questions, but when he hears this one he gets that little look in his eye and turns around. Too juicy a steak not to bite into it.
But this being Bill Clinton, he can’t say something about someone else without saying something about himself, and in this case trying to pump up his presidency which will, as he knows, be forgotten except for one thing. So he claimed credit for ending the Vietnam War. You know, whatever.
Clinton said:
If it hadn’t been for John McCain, I don’t think I could have had the ability to effectively end the Vietnam War, reconcile the Vietnam, get a full accounting for all the missing in action, and many other things. And they’re now our best ally in Southeast Asia.
Thank you, John McCain, for your service to your country, and your service to Bill Clinton.
Unfortunately, it was the North Vietnamese who ended the Vietnam War, on their terms.
A White House staffer, Kelly Sadler, reportedly made a bad joke during a private meeting, something about how John McCain will soon be dead so it doesn’t matter how he votes on President Trump’s CIA nominee, Gina Haspel.
Someone went running to the press and word got out. Sadler reportedly did the right thing and called Meghan McCain, the senator’s daughter, to apologize. The call apparently did not go well and Miss McCain is calling for Sadler’s head.
That’s ridiculous, and I hope the White House stands its ground on this one. Meghan McCain has a right to be ungracious, she’s suffering, although it would have been more impressive if she just accepted the apology.
But you don’t ruin someone’s career – and if she’s good at what she does, harm the country – over a dumb joke made during one of their 16-hour days at the White House. Not any more than John McCain should have had his career ruined for continuing to casually and apparently regularly use the racist term “gooks” to describe the North Vietnamese 30 years after they tortured him.
This country needs to lighten up about language and offense. The over-sensitivity we see if a function of how trivial our daily lives have become, how there is so little meaning that we need insult to find something to be passionate about.
And worse, of course, it’s a part of the political correctness that is suppressing speech and enforcing left-wing thought on the nation. It’s exactly what President Trump was elected to combat, the one silver lining of his own rude behavior.
So far, so good. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders today declined to get into it with reporters over the remarks. Good show. Stick with it.
I’m sorry he is dying. And he is a great American hero. But Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is not a conservative and, from his stance on immigration to his decision to sink the Obamacare repeal effort with his “thumbs down” vote last year, has done damage to the conservative cause over the years.
Including by losing to Barack Obama, who was infinitely worse.
In a new book, The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations
Right now, Republicans are on the wrong side of that progress and if we want to retain our competitiveness in the fastest-growing communities in the country we’ll stop letting the zealots drive the debate, and fix the problems that [give] them their soapbox . . . They’re still a small fraction in the Republican Party. But they’re the ones getting all the attention right now. They need to be confronted, not ignored or winked at or quietly dismissed as kooks. They need to be confronted before their noxious views spread further and damage for generations the reputation of the Republican Party.
McCain asserts that those seeking to limit immigration fear America is being “contaminated by the customs of non-European immigrants.” That is, that they’re racists.
Actually, they are concerend that the historically high and unending levels of immigration, including millions of illegal immigrants, are too much for the country and the culture – yes, we do have a culture – to absorb. That’s not racist, that’s common sense.
If 20 million Frenchman landed here tomorrw, I’d be very concerned.
Of course, when McCain was in political trouble in 2010, facing a primary challenge from his right, it was a different story. That’s when he ran this ad:
Dang it! Sounds like a politician.
Sen. John McCain, who shares with Hillary Clinton membership in that exclusive club of losers of presidential elections, is counseling Hillary to accept the tragic death of her political career and move on. From an interview with Esquire: “You’ve got to understand that you can’t rewrite history . . . One of the almost irresistible… Continue Reading
Earlier this month, I contended that Sen. John McCain’s otherwise inexplicable vote to tank the Senate’s Obamacare repeal effort likely stemmed from lingering resentment over President Trump ridiculing him during the campaign for being captured by the Vietnamese. In an interview broadcast Sunday on C-SPAN, McCain made a clear reference to Trump’s claim that he… Continue Reading
A reporter, apparently from Fox News – MSNBC wants to make a big deal of this – asked Sen. John McCain whether his relationship with the president had deteriorated to the point that he would block anything that comes down from the White House. McCain was furious. “Why would you say something that stupid? Why… Continue Reading
Sen. John McCain Friday became the second Republican to oppose the latest Senate effort to repeal Obamacare, joining the other Senate Master of Self-Indulgence, Rand Paul, in opposition. Just one more Republican opponent and the bill is sunk. From McCain’s statement: As I have repeatedly stressed, health care reform legislation ought to be the product… Continue Reading