The Secret Origin Of John McCain’s Courage
He was dying.
House Speaker Mike Johnson hustled hard into Thursday evening rounding up enough votes to pass the poor-person killing bill that the Senate sent back this week. At one point, Johnson had managed to whip one of his tenuous “yes” votes into a hard “no,” because as a caucus leader, Johnson makes a good craven lickspittle. We’ve been here before, though, and usually Republicans get past their differences and united over their shared goal of hurting the most vulnerable among us.
Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries spent the day calling out Republicans whose constituents stood to lose the most if the horrible bill passed. He shouted into the empty void that represents that GOP’s collective soul: “All we need are four Republicans to join us in support of their constituents, to have John McCain-level courage, and stand up in defense of the healthcare of the American people,” he said. “What type of party would bring a bill to the House floor that rips away Medicaid from those in need?”
I assume Jeffries’s question was rhetorical. Otherwise, he’s not paid much attention during his congressional career: The GOP is the type of party that rips away live-saving health care from people in need. Republicans voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act at least 70 times over seven years. John McCain himself actively supported repeal.
Everyone remembers McCain’s famous thumb’s down that killed the GOP’s plot to kill millions by denying them health care. However, there’s a grim reality behind McCain’s “no” vote that the appeals to Republicans’ inner McCain don’t fully recognize: The man was dying.
John McCain was a diehard economic conservative, so he would’ve likely opposed major health care reform regardless of the political climate. However, when he was up for re-election in 2010, he quickly yielded to right-wing Tea Party pressure. Facing a primary challenge from radio talk show host and former House Rep. J.D. Hayworth, McCain was desperate to shake the RINO label he’d earned because he’d dared work with Democrats on some issues. He even cast off the “maverick” identity he’d cultivated over the years: “I never considered myself a maverick,” he said in 2010. “I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.”
Apparently, this meant doing whatever it took to win the primary. McCain had voted for the bank bailout but was now openly critical of it. He reversed his position on closing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. Once a champion of campaign finance reform, he remained silent after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. He also backed away from past statements that supported gays serving openly in the military. McCain even led the filibuster that derailed Barack Obama’s efforts to end “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
McCain praised Arizona’s 2010 anti-immigration bill that let police arrest anyone who wasn’t carrying identification. That was a significant shift to the right, considering that McCain had worked with liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy on comprehensive immigration reform just four years earlier.
Sarah Palin’s endorsement that year was considered a critical boost to McCain’s re-election campaign. Palin was far more popular among GOP primary voters. In fact, when she took the stage with McCain at a March rally, more people shouted his former running mate’s name than his own.
McCain eagerly accepted Palin’s endorsement and the associated Tea Party support. The man who’d served in Congress since 1983 even echoed the Tea Party’s anti-establishment rhetoric when calling for the ACA’s repeal.
“There’s something going on out there, my friends,” McCain said. “It’s a revolution. It's a peaceful revolution, but we're going to take on this Obamacare.” (Watch below.)
McCain folded to Palin, so it’s not a shock that he didn’t consistently stand up to Donald Trump. He was very much like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — distancing himself from Trump’s worst actions while otherwise enabling him. Most of McCain’s true issues with Trump were over foreign policy. This is somewhat ironic because McCain was a hot head who, if elected in 2008, would’ve probably bombed any nation that looked at us funny. He opposed the Obama administration’s Iran deal — saying Secretary of State John Kerry was “delusional” and had “[given] away the store” in negotiations. Sure, McCain wasn’t in bed with Putin, like Trump, but his hardline against Russia was consistent with his interventionist foreign policy stance.
When McCain finally withdrew his endorsement of Trump after the Access Hollywood tape’s release, an obliging media offered a more positive spin than was probably warranted. Arizona’s junior senator Jeff Flake had long withheld his endorsement, but McCain, who was facing a primary challenge, was more circumspect, simply saying he would “support the party’s nominee.”
McCain had privately worried that Trump’s unpopularity among Hispanic voters would hurt him in the general election (this is obviously ironic given Trump’s 2024 performance). However, he avoided directly challenging Trump in fear of alienating pro-Trump voters. Of course, the Access Hollywood tape dropped in October, long after McCain safely won his primary. It was all political calculation not principle.
Trump’s eventual victory finally offered Republicans the chance to deliver on their promise to kill the Affordable Care Act. McCain was fully on board with this objective. He said in July 2017, “Have no doubt: Congress must replace Obamacare, which has hit Arizonans with some of the highest premium increases in the nation and left 14 of Arizona’s 15 counties with only one provider option on the exchanges this year.”
That same month, McCain was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. A more repulsive right-wing theory is that the cancer caused his seeming about face on ACA repeal. Obviously, the MAGA mind struggles to comprehend anything more complicated than what they’ve read in an email forward. McCain did want to avoid 14 million Americans nationwide suddenly losing health care after the ACA expanded Medicaid. He might not have supported expanding health care access, but he seemingly understood the political and human cost of yanking health care from people once they had it.
The unanswered question, though, is whether McCain would have given ACA repeal the thumb’s down without the knowledge that his life — and thus his political career — would soon end. (He was literally planning his funeral at the time.) Lisa Murkowski voted “yes” for Trump’s terrible budget bill that she openly derides and hopes fails. Those are the desperate actions of someone unwilling to pull the plug on her political career, as her colleague Thom Tillis just did.
McCain’s eleventh-hour courage is not easily replicable. Democrats aren’t just asking that Republicans sacrifice their political careers but any well-compensated future they might have in right-wing circles. (Forget the cushy Fox News hosting gig.)
The reason Republicans should vote against the bill is because Democrats have put the fear of god into them. It’s why far too many Democrats voted for the Laken Riley Act. That was the opposite of courage, but it was definitely politics. Any appeal to a Republican’s conscience is dependent on their having one. That’s not a gamble I’m willing to make.
Republicans tend to find their souls when they no longer have to face GOP voters. It says a lot about those voters, and a lot about those who choose to run for office as Republicans.
I have a slightly different take...Yes, McCain was finally out of fucks because he was dying, but Trump had consistently insulted and personally attacked McCain. McCain finally had the opportunity to massively fuck Trump over with zero real consequences to himself. I simply do not accept that concern for American healthcare access overrode the inner glee Mr. McCain felt at that high profile opportunity to personally blow up Donald's agenda - that it actually helped Americans was just icing on McCain FUCK YOU, DONNIE cupcake.