As to this and McCain, I wrote on a McCain thread:
However, his appearance yesterday was very McCain in nature. First of all, he flew accross the country to cast a vote that opened the way to potentially pass a terrible bill that will kick millions off health care. Then, because he is McCain, he gave a grandiose speech that spoke of wanting to get back to a Senate where both parties worked together. In that same speech, he lied that the Democrats refused to allow Republicans any input on Obamacare. In his speech he said he would not vote for the bill as is -- but before the day ended .. HE VOTED FOR THE BILL he said he had concerns about before going to Arizona!
The lie that Republicns had no voice is not a "little" lie, it is a gigantic lie he could safely make because Republicans have claimed that for 7 years because no Republican (other than one in the House) voted for the bill. However, getting no votes does not mean having no voice. Apparently he forgot the 4 month delay during which Baucus worked with a subset of the Finance committee including Snowe, Hatch, Grassley and Enzi plus right leaning Democrats, Conrad and Bingaman. https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/health-cares-gang-on-the-hill/?_r=0 What is clear is McConnell bullied everyone to voteagainst it. I watched the Finance committee vote when the bill was voted out. It was expected to be party line, but Snowe voted for it saying she did not want to be on the wrong side of history. A few months later, on the Senate floor, she voted no to essentially the same bill.
That effort very likely had the long term cost of pushing back when a bill passed the Senate. The cost of that was very high. Imagine that a bill passed in late October (2 months earlier than the week before Christmas when it did pass). the likelihood is that the House and Senate conference would have made the tweeks needed and the conference bill would then have passed completely under the normal process before Christmas. Incidentially had health care been a done deal, it is even likely that Scott Brown might have lost, giving us another year with 60 senators.
I was reading in the WP today that Joe Donelley wants to get a vote on his amendment that would throw the bill back to the committees that should have written it -- to allow it to be worked on in a bipartisan way. This amendment is asking for just what McCain called for ... but does anyone think he would vote for it if there Collins and Murkowsky were for it?
What surprises me about McCain is that with nothing left to lose, he could have come back -- asked to speak BEFORE the vote not immediately afterward and made almost the same speech. The difference would be that of course it makes no sense to open discussion on what he himself called a shell of a bill when he was arguing that what was needed was a bipartisan process. It would have been heroic to come back and make THAT speech to the Republicans before the vote. It also would have meant he would vote NO on the MTP. Instead, to borrow from Hamilton, McCain threw away his shot giving what could have been a powerful speech had it outined a path to achieve it.
That could have been the impetus to REALLY start a bipartisan process. It is even possible that it could have led to something that could get 60 or more votes - as ACA did, while McConnell is struggling for 50. McCain has been attacked by the far right, Trump's base for years. That will continue - even with the speech he did give, which they will trash. As to the media, very will continue their canonization of this heroic, but flawed man.
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