Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has once again apparently saved the liberal bacon by insisting on the use of traditional processes and procedure when it comes to legislation, as CNN reports:
“I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal,” the Arizona Republican said in a statement. “I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried. Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will (affect) insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it. Without a full CBO score, which won’t be available by the end of the month, we won’t have reliable answers to any of those questions.”
But I have to ask whether these are the salutary efforts of a man who will lead Congress out of the hellhole it had recently dug for itself, or the words of a man who remembers better times and is repeating it to a chorus who will largely disregard him.
I fear the answer is the latter. The Senator may wish to believe that he can shame the GOP into returning to the better forms of government, but I fear that the very character of his Party has changed so much in the last twenty years that it’s difficult to see them as willing to use those forms. As one of the older legislators (elected to the House in 1982 and has served continuously since, moving to the Senate in 1986), he remembers what might be considered better times, when Senate collegiality was more important, and the Senate GOP rejected the attempt to convict and eject President Clinton.
But the rightward shift of the GOP has made the most important of McCain’s goals in this context, the return to proper legislating, nearly unattainable. We’ve seen Speaker Ryan and, to a greater extent, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, engage in lies, mendacity, and legislative activities that would embarrass their mothers, and they do so with no evident reluctance.
I do not see the shaming by a Senator in the twilight of his career as being truly effective.
Now, as some have pointed out, given the activities of some of the most extreme of the GOP Congressional members, the more moderate of the conservatives may appear to conform to McCain’s wishes, but I fear it will only be out of necessity. Bi-partisan efforts may allow the GOP in the two chambers to ignore their most extreme members’ objections to others’ plans, but don’t mistake this for an embrace of the old ways of governing through mutual consent.
The GOP, despite not understanding how to govern, appears to be convinced that it has all the answers and it doesn’t need any help from anyone else. I fear that Senator McCain is having a last hurrah, and his replacement will not understand the importance of good government, and how both sides can have good ideas.
The Party ideology no longer permits such thing blasphemous thinking.
