‘The time when Republicans and Democrats went on TV and fought about taxes is dead…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In the years after losing a primary battle to George W. Bush, Sen. John McCain is said to have considered switching political parties and to have openly courted liberal running mates.
Now, those close to the late Arizona senator are working overtime to finally fulfill that legacy.
The latest is Nicolle Wallace, a former McCain campaign adviser and current MSNBC host, who visited Seth Meyers’s talk show to explain why Democrats must win Congress.
“I think that any White House is improved by having a check and a balance—this White House more than any other,” she said.
Wallace made clear what sort of checks and balances she meant: “I think it’s really important that Democrats take over the House and/or the Senate,” she said.
It marked just the latest example of what some have seen as the mercurial and vindictive McCain trying to settle scores with Trump from beyond the grave.
What began with McCain’s melodramatic, “thumbs down” vote on Obamacare repeal continued with the parade of left-wingers schmoozing at his funeral, which McCain meticulously planned, according to daughter Meghan, a co-host on “The View.”
Another pet project of McCain’s, Arizona State University’s McCain Institute, now appears to have crossed the threshold from academic thinktank into political action committee with a series of “Mavericks Needed” billboards it plans to run in battleground states, mostly where Republicans are ahead, prior to the Nov. 6 midterm election and leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
Wallace told Meyers that—apart from a staff mutiny invoking the 25th amendment, which she also advocated—the only way to check Trump was by empowering Democrats, who have threatened to bring the president’s agenda to a halt using subpoenas, investigations and possibly even impeachment proceedings.
“More often than not, people that have seen American presidents up close and know what the conduct is supposed to be like will ultimately decide that a check on this administration is urgent,” she said.
A UC-Berkeley graduate who was communications chief for George W. Bush before becoming a senior adviser for McCain’s 2008 campaign, Wallace now considers herself a “nonpracticing Republican”—but she told Meyer she has no intention of returning.
“The time when Republicans and Democrats went on TV and fought about taxes is dead,” she said.
Apparently, such policy debates have been replaced with former Republicans instead getting invited to schmooze liberal hosts with wistful discussions of how best to thwart the president.
Wallace’s interview with Meyers, lacking considerably in self-awareness of her own contributions to the partisan rancor and to Trump’s ascension within GOP ranks, left no doubt that while working for a left-leaning cable outlet, she has gone full-native.
She cast the recent string of Democrats who had received homemade “explosive devices” in the mail as “victims” even though many have publicly endorsed the incivility and political violence on the Left.
Wallace also condescendingly claimed that the current conservative movement was the result of a “grievance” culture (appropriating a popular buzzword often used to criticize the Left) that began when former McCain running mate Sarah Palin started pandering to the baser instincts of her audience.
“I saw that her crowds were bigger and louder and more animated by her speaking to their grievance, speaking to their nativisms, speaking to their feeling about being angry about immigration and other issues, but John McCain didn’t embrace any of those. That’s probably why, ultimately, the two of them ended up not on the same page.”