The McCain memorial service at the National Cathedral on Saturday reminded some of the Paul Wellstone funeral in 2002: not so much a celebration of a man’s life but a televised opportunity to try and settle political scores. Which was a shame. Many on the right who support Trump were willing to have a certain amount of detente, to acknowledge the sadness of a man’s death, respect his service to his country, and avoid reminding people of what he actually was in reality.
But on Saturday afternoon that all changed as bitter globalist after bitter globalist appeared to feel the need to knife the president verbally on national television. As the spectacle unfolded, it struck some that this was not only a lashing out, but a passing away of a rejected governing class: the bipartisan globalists who repeatedly sold out the American taxpayer.
The resentment of the rejection was on display as they clearly felt no shame in using the vehicle of a dead man to do a drive-by attack on Trump. From George W. “I looked into Putin’s eyes and saw his soul” Bush to the Community Organizer in Chief to Meghan McCain, one would be forgiven for thinking this was more about Trump than the man being laid to rest.
For all their resentment of Trump, they made Trump the central character on Saturday.
They would have been better served simply to celebrate the life of John McCain. Which, to be clear, there wasn’t much to celebrate in regards to policy or political achievements. We cannot forget John McCain encouraging the use of the IRS to try and squelch the Tea Party movement, his behavior on the matter mirroring that of Barack Obama. But then again, the similarities in McCain’s and Obama’s behavior shouldn’t be that surprising as the Ruling Class feels it can weaponize the administrative state against political opponents whenever it likes.
In that vein, one of McCain’s crowning achievements was McCain-Feingold. That bill, written by the Ruling Class to further entrench it, was nothing but a plan to protect incumbents from well-funded insurgents who might take issue with political leaders selling out the American people and driving the country into $20 trillion of debt while “managing” America’s decline on the international stage.
Nor can we forget that McCain was a peddler of the fake Steele Dossier, the genesis of the Trump Russia collusion fairytale, which is one of the greatest political hoaxes ever attempted on the American people. There is also the little matter of McCain raising millions in his last re-election cycle on the promise of repealing ObamaCare, yet in an act that many feel was meant more to spite Trump than anything else, he used his deciding vote to keep the failed policy in place. Then, by some reports, celebrating with his Democrat pals after the vote by saying, “Let’s see Donald make America great now.”
Famously, McCain was known as a “maverick.” McCain was a man who was going to do things his way regardless of the wisdom of it all. Some called it bold and courageous and considered that McCain was a principled contrarian. Others thought of it more as evidence that McCain thought first and last of McCain and his “erratic and self-aggrandizing party of one.” He was beloved by the Opposition Party, a darling of the mainstream media for his undermining of Republicans, especially conservative ones. They promoted him because he was a useful tool with which they could attack Republicans. Their love affair with McCain was temporarily suspended in 2008 when he found himself on the wrong side of the fight with their appointed Golden Child. But once Obama was ensconced in the White House, they reignited their affair with him once again, displayed by their nauseating and hypocritical tributes to him this last week.
So let’s not be hypocrites like them. Let’s celebrate McCain’s service to his country, and of course, allow family members like Meghan McCain a certain amount of grace however ill-advised some of her words on Saturday were. But pushing the rhetoric aside, actions make the man, and by any measure, as Jed Babbin put it so well, John McCain was a war hero, but a conservative apostate and history will remember him as such.
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