Jennifer Rubin is enraged that the Republicans are resisting the idea of renaming the Russell Senate Building to honor the late Senator McCain:
If you want to understand just how morally bankrupt and reactionary is the Republican Party these days, look no further than Senate Republicans’ opposition to replacing the name of the late Democratic senator from Georgia and notorious segregationist Richard Russell on a Senate building with that of their recently deceased colleague, John McCain. The Hill reports:
“Senator Russell was a well respected man from the South and up here too,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), adding that he was “a man of his time.”
“He was a well-respected senator,” Shelby said. …
“If you want to get into that you have to get into George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and all of our — most of our Founding Fathers, maybe with the exception of Hamilton,” he said. “It’s easy to prejudge what they should have done.”
Better to name a ship after him, which happened in a hackhanded sort of way. But that’s not really my point. My suggestion is that if the Republicans are reluctant to honor one of their most pugnacious and principled members, let the Democrats do it.
That’s right.
When the Democrats take control of government, be it in a few months or a couple of years, they should take the lead on the issue, and they should not permit any namby-pamby Republican who refused to act right now to sign on later as a co-sponsor or whatever.
That’ll send a message that Democrats want to lead everyone, while Republicans only care about … themselves.
