Skedaddling McSally trips on elephant in the room

On Friday, Sen. Martha McSally was asked what seems a fairly reasonable question given the times in which we live:

Would she be willing to ask a foreign government to dig up dirt on a political rival?

She didn’t answer. Instead, she did the McSally Skedaddle, walking away from reporters so abruptly that she tripped over the elephant in the room.

Here’s the problem for McSally: That elephant isn’t going anywhere.

It’ll be lumbering in her path for the next year as she tries to convince Arizona voters to do that which they declined to do in 2018.

With 362 days to go until the Nov. 3 election, McSally enters the final year of the race not with the strut of a sitting senator but with the stoop of someone carrying a heavy load.

Elephants on your back are like that.

For McSally — who after her 2018 loss was appointed to fill Sen. John McCain’s seat — it comes down to this:

If she dares to criticize President Donald Trump for asking a foreign government to investigate former Vice President and 2012 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, she risks losing her base.

But if she defends his actions in The Phone Call, as it has come to be known, she risks losing the election.

And not only losing but losing in historic fashion — becoming the first Arizona Republican to hand not one but two Senate seats to Democrats. Double ouch.

Yet even with that on the line, McSally was one of the first Republican senators to race to Trump’s defense in September when Democrats launched their impeachment inquiry into his July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Democrats, McSally declared, were on a “kamikaze mission.”

“Literally they are on a path to reelect the president, keep the Senate majority (Republican) and possibly flip the House,” she said at the time. “It’s a total distraction.”

Or, as it turns out, a total disaster for a certain vulnerable senator who grabbed onto Trump’s coattails in 2018 and is still holding on tight.

McSally has never said whether she is troubled by what she read in the White House rough draft of Trump’s phone call with Zelensky, a conversation that occurred shortly after Trump stalled $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.

When the question comes up — and it does and it does and it will — she pivots to the secretive way in which Democrats have conducted their impeachment inquiry. Or she bolts.

On Friday, after a congressional hearing on health issues in Scottsdale, McSally wanted to talk about her efforts to boost research on Alzheimer’s

disease.

Reporters, naturally, didn’t.

Cue AzFamily’s Dennis Welch: “We wanted to ask you if you would be willing to ask a foreign country to dig up political dirt on your opponent?”

McSally went into the McSally shuffle followed by the patented McSally Skedaddle.

“Dennis, the House is doing what they’re doing and in the meantime, the Senate is doing our work in order to do what matters for Arizonans,” she said before walking away from reporters after taking just one question.

Another video clip in the books, one that shows her unwilling to say whether she would call upon a foreign government to help her get elected.

Meanwhile, her Democratic opponent Mark Kelly was delighted to answer Welch’s question.

“Of course, my campaign won’t ask for or accept any assistance from a foreign government. That’s an easy decision because it’s against the law...,” Kelly said in a statement.

McSally, I suppose, can take heart in a new poll that shows a slim margin of Arizona voters don’t want Donald Trump impeached.

The poll, by Emerson College, showed Arizona voters oppose impeachment, 50% to 44%. But that same poll showed Arizona voters disapprove of Trump, 50% to 45%.

And the jury’s out on McSally, who trailed Kelly in the poll by 1 percentage point.

That’s not good spot for a sitting senator, especially one known for leaping to this president’s defense (an exhausting endeavor, given the need for a fair constant amount of leaping).

It’s certainly not a good spot for an unelected senator who needs to convince suburban Republican women and independents — the ones who sent Democrat Kyrsten Sinema to the Senate in 2018 — to give her a second look.

In 2016, Trump became the first GOP nominee in 20 years to receive less than 50% of the vote in Arizona.

Since taking office, Morning Consult reports, his net approval in Arizona has dropped 23 points to its current dismal state. Currently, 47% approve of the job Trump is doing and 50% disapprove.

Bottom line: It appears McSally can’t win with him but she can’t win without him. That sounds like a lousy love song.

Unfortunately, for McSally, it’s shaping up to be her campaign theme song.