McCain upends Republican effort to kill Obamacare
WASHINGTON — John McCain seemed poised to be the saviour of the Republican health bill when he returned to the U.S. Capitol despite a brain cancer diagnosis.
He turned out to be the executioner.
The longtime Arizona senator stunned pretty much everyone Friday by turning on his party and his president and joining two other Republican senators in voting “no” on the Republicans’ final effort to repeal “Obamacare.”
That killed the bill. And it also dealt what looks like a death blow to the Republican Party’s years of promises to get rid of former president Barack Obama’s health law, pledges that helped the GOP win control of the House, the Senate and the White House.
It was a moment burning with drama, irony and contradictions, playing out live on a tense Senate floor.
Eighty years old and in the twilight of a remarkable career, McCain lived up to his reputation as a maverick. When he walked into the well of the Senate about 1:30 a.m. and gave a thumbs-down to the legislation, there were audible gasps. Democrats briefly broke into cheers, which Minority Leader Chuck Schumer quickly waved his arm to quiet.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stood stone-faced, his arms crossed. McCain had just saved the signature legislative achievement of the man who beat him for the presidency in 2008, a law the senator himself had vigorously campaigned against while seeking a sixth Senate term last year.
On Friday afternoon, McCain’s office announced he was returning to Arizona to begin radiation and chemotherapy treatments for his brain tumour.
After so many years as a senator, with so little left to lose, McCain had taken a stand for the Senate he used to inhabit, the one where he made deals across the aisle with the likes of Ted Kennedy, not the riven, stalemated Congress of today.
“We have seen the world’s greatest deliberative body succumb to partisan rancour and gridlock,” McCain said in a statement. “The vote last night presents the Senate with an opportunity to start fresh. It is now time to return to regular order with input from all of our members — Republicans and Democrats — and bring a bill to the floor of the Senate for amendment and debate.”
U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted his disapproval of McCain’s “no”’ vote, as well as those of fellow GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska whose opposition had been expected. But a president who once mocked McCain’s years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam did not have much sway with the senator when it counted.
Vice-President Mike Pence lobbied McCain right up to the end. The two men huddled on the Senate floor for about a half hour before the vote.
The roll was called, and Collins and Murkowski both voted no. With Democrats unanimously opposed, McConnell could lose only two Republicans in the 52-48 Senate. McCain came to the front, raised his arm to get the attention of the tally clerk, gestured no, and walked away past the glowering McConnell. With that one moment, seven years of urgent GOP promises were dead, likely never to be revived.
McConnell’s remarks in the immediate aftermath were a bitter rebuke.
“I and many of my colleagues did as we promised and voted to repeal this failed law,” the majority leader said on the Senate floor. “We told our constituents we would vote that way and when the moment came, when the moment came, most of us did.”