The Not A War Hero And Health Care

What goes around, comes around. Initially,  Initially signaling that he was strongly leading in favor of the Cassidy-Graham health care (tax cuts for the wealthy) bill, Arizona senator John

McCain grew less committal as time passed and the specter of Graham-Cassidy passing the Senate became a reality.

“We need to go to regular order,” McCain told reporters after meeting with McConnell on Monday. “I am not supportive of the bill yet"...

What puzzled McCain’s friends is the idea that a Hail Mary on Obamacare as the clock wound down would ever persuade the sixth-term senator to overcome his convictions. McCain had long railed against the law, but the idea of legislating on the fly to uphold a campaign promise always seemed anathema to the longtime committee chairman.

“Here’s the thing. John has always believed that the Senate ought to operate by regular order, through committees on a bipartisan basis. And he’s always done that,” Black said. “He’s a man you can take at his word in his career. And people should have.”

Rushing through without careful consideration a bill which directly affects one-sixth of the economy may well have been the immediate cause of McCain's decision, and even alone it justifies his decision to oppose it.

McCain's opposition, along with Senator Paul's "no" vote, will be enough to sink the GOP's latest scheme as long as Maine senator Collins (as expected) comes out against it. Assuming that occurs, it will be the second time that the effort by the Repub congressional leadership and President Trump will have been scuttled by the vote of the Arizona senator.

Twice in two months John McCain will have blocked Donald Trump's declaration of victory.





“He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured,” blared Donald J. Trump twenty-six months ago, in July 2015.  It wasn't a mistake, a slip of the tongue. When McCain was the Repub nominee for President in 2000, Trump told an NBC interviewer “You would say that maybe he wasn’t an actual war hero. He was captured, but maybe not a war hero."

The immediate cause is not the root cause.  John McCain forgets neither his five-and-a-half years in a prisoner of war camp while refusing early release nor the man who twice decided he was an easy target.

It's fitting that the elephant is the symbol of the GOP because it has long been said "an elephant never forgets." It is said also "revenge is a dish best served cold."









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