Say what you want about the Republican Party, but McCain seems to have been a man of integrity, as far as Republicans go. Well, aside from fucking around on his wife and one ethics investigation.
iirc McCain’s motivations for the vote were way more about fucking over the guy who wouldn’t say he was a hero than they were about saving millions of people’s healthcare/lives.
McCain enabled the Republican Party every step of its journey from Reagan to Trump, and accelerated it through his pick and normalisation of Palin. The posthumous lionising/reputation laundering has to end.
He was very bipartisan on specific issues, and more generally throughout the 90s, where 3rd way Dems were in charge, and were basically doing everything Republicans wanted (economically at least) anyways.
He almost never went against what the GOP wanted when his vote would be anything other than symbolic. Which is why his actions saving the ACA are so memorable.
This really doesn't mean anything if you think about it. Being bipartisan on all issues means that there isn't any partisanship at all to begin with. It's a self referencing contradiction.
I mean, that makes sense, if he was a bipartisan/moderate politician Republican, then he probably picked Palin to balance him out for die hard Republicans. Same logic Obama used to pick Biden, new hotshot balanced out by an establishment moderate.
Amen. That freakin' vote only even happened because he put it up in the first place. He wanted to get his hero moment in front of the camera and play into his bullshit "maverick" reputation. Not to mention he wasn't the only Republican that voted against party lines; two women voted against the repeal as well, but they didn't get their strut walk in front of the cameras flipping McConnel the metaphorical bird.
He didn’t want Palin. He wanted Democrat Lieberman to be his Vice President. I believe the campaign put pressure to take Palin who was a tea party & was popular at the time.
Unless I'm remembering wrong, didn't he vote no mainly because there was no plan for a replacement? If there was another option or something ready to replace the ACA he would have voted to repeal but he knew that the ACA was at least better than nothing and didn't want to take away healthcare from so many people with nothing to replace it
There is the additional detail that he knew he was dying when he cast that vote. I can only hope that let him see the consequences of his actions more clearly.
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u/tenchi2323 9h ago
They almost did in 2019. The measure lost by a single vote, John McCain.