McCain Once Almost Left the GOP. What About Now?

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/30/mccain-once-almost-left-the-gop-what-about-now-215437

 

n the long, tumultuous political career of Senator John McCain, it would have been remembered as a turning point. It was only rumored at the time. But the Arizona senator nearly bolted from the Republican Party in 2001.

In secret negotiations with then-Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, McCain plotted how he would depart the GOP. He was furious over the way the party establishment had treated him in the 2000 race for the Republican presidential nomination against the eventually victorious George W. Bush. And within weeks of Bush’s swearing-in as president in 2001, McCain told Daschle that he was looking for a way out of the GOP, probably by declaring himself an independent—a move that would have thrown control of the otherwise 50-50 Senate to the Democrats. The negotiations got far enough, Daschle later told me, that the two men discussed the logistics of the news conference at which McCain would make the announcement. “We came very close,” Daschle said.

 

All these years later, amid the chaos of Donald Trump’s presidency and with McCain casting his historic vote last week to defy the White House and derail a fevered Republican effort to undo Obamacare, Daschle and other Democratic strategists and lawmakers are questioning whether the party should mount a new campaign to lure McCain and other wavering Republican senators away from the GOP.

Other obvious targets for the campaign, they said, would be the two female Republican senators who stymied the GOP’s repeal efforts last week: Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

“After what we’ve seen on health care, and on so many other issues, it is important for us to reach out to Republicans right now to let them know how welcome they would be to join us,” said Daschle, who left Congress in 2005 and now runs his own political advisory firm. “I’m sure some of those conversations may already be well underway.”

Republicans currently hold 52 Senate seats. Two or three defections would swing the balance of power in the Senate to the Democrats—a political earthquake that would give Democrats control of the Senate confirmation process for executive branch and Supreme Court nominees, as well as the ability to launch more aggressive investigations of Trump and his administration, including of possible collusion between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign. It would also make Republican priorities from Obamacare repeal to tax reform even less likely.

The last Senate defection occurred in 2009, when Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania left the Republican Party to become a Democrat, which gave the Democrats the all-important 60 votes needed to break Senate filibusters. Daschle was his party’s chief negotiator in the 2001 defection of Senator James Jeffords of Vermont, who left the GOP after 26 years in Congress to declare himself an independent who caucused with the Democrats; the move gave Senate control to the Democrats in what had been a 50-50 Senate.

Daschle marveled Friday as he watched McCain, who has always relished his reputation as a political maverick, literally turn his thumb down and cast his dramatic vote on the Senate floor to kill a Republican bill to overhaul — and likely, undermine — President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

“He’s my hero,” Daschle said of McCain. “I really mean that. He’s my hero. That’s exactly what somebody needed to do. It was a courageous act.”

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

I think he should be forced to use the VA he claimed to have fixed for his cancer Treatments. 

[smilesammich 10,727]

1 hour ago, Nature Boy Flair said:

I think he should be forced to use the VA he claimed to have fixed for his cancer Treatments. 

i don't know how the va works but, couldn't he just pay more and get treated elsewhere anyway? i mean, it's not so much about the type of coverage you have when you've got money.

[Dashinka 24,493]

McCain is in the GOP?

[smilesammich 10,727]

25 minutes ago, Bill & Katya said:

McCain is in the GOP?

i asked the same thing about trump 

[Dashinka 24,493]

29 minutes ago, smilesammich said:

i asked the same thing about trump 

Trump is probably much more of a RINO than McCain.  This is what surprises me relative to all the protests from the Left since he is more on their side.

[smilesammich 10,727]

1 minute ago, Bill & Katya said:

Trump is probably much more of a RINO than McCain.  This is what surprises me relative to all the protests from the Left since he is more on their side.

i've never liked mccain, and i don't like him now. but to my knowledge mcain has been republican way longer than trump. 

[Dashinka 24,493]

Just now, smilesammich said:

i've never liked mccain, and i don't like him now. but to my knowledge mcain has been republican way longer than trump. 

McCain is honorable, but somewhat naive when he thinks the Dems will actually compromise their strategy.  The only compromise that ever occurs in Washington is when the Right compromises to the platform of the Left.

[smilesammich 10,727]

1 minute ago, Bill & Katya said:

McCain is honorable, but somewhat naive when he thinks the Dems will actually compromise their strategy.  The only compromise that ever occurs in Washington is when the Right compromises to the platform of the Left.

but not anymore, now that we've got the artisan deal maker in chief. all the compromises are beeyoootiful.

 

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

1 hour ago, smilesammich said:

i don't know how the va works but, couldn't he just pay more and get treated elsewhere anyway? i mean, it's not so much about the type of coverage you have when you've got money.

That's kind of the point in wired need to mansplain way 

[smilesammich 10,727]

Just now, Nature Boy Flair said:

That's kind of the point in wired need to mansplain way 

mansplain in wired, you lost me