John McCain: Please Resign

Earlier this year, Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran resigned from the Senate after serving his state in the upper chamber for nearly 40 years due to health reasons.  Cochran’s resignation came just months before he likely would have become Senate President Pro Tempore, as the current holder of that position, Orrin Hatch, will not run for re-election.  Mississippi’s Republican Governor Phil Bryant quickly appointed Cindy Hyde-Smith as his replacement and a special election will take place this fall to fill the remainder of Cochran’s term, which expires in 2020.  Hyde-Smith has decided to run in the special election, as has Cochran’s 2014 primary challenger Chris McDaniel, who had previously filed to run against incumbent Senator Roger Wicker in the regularly scheduled Senate election this fall.  The special election will come in the form of a jungle primary, which will take place on Election Day.  Should no candidate capture 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates, regardless of party, will advance to a runoff that will take place three weeks later.   

John McCain, who has served Arizona in the Senate for more than 30 years, finds himself in a similar situation.  He currently finds himself in a battle with brain cancer and his prolonged absence from the Senate has effectively cost the Republicans a Senate seat, as the looming battle over President Trump’s Supreme Court nomination demonstrates.  Even with the abolition of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, Republicans still have quite a battle ahead, which will officially begin when President Trump announces his pick to replace the retiring moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy on Monday night.   The GOP cannot afford to lose the support of a single Republican Senator, as McCain’s absence means Republicans only have 50 votes in the Senate.  Senator Susan Collins, the most liberal Republican in the Senate, has said she will not vote for any nominee who explicitly promises to overturn Roe v. Wade while Senators Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Tom Cotton have expressed doubts about one of the potential candidates, Brett Kavanaugh.  While a few Red State Democrats, especially the three who voted for Neil Gorsuch, may ultimately decide to vote for the nominee, Republicans cannot afford to take that chance.    

Just for a historical perspective, Senator Ted Kennedy, who also ended up dying of a brain tumor, first learned of his illness in May 2008 and ended up dying in August 2009.  McCain first learned of his prognosis in July 2017. For a variety of reasons, McCain should follow Cochran’s lead and step aside. A petition on change.org respectfully asking the Senator to step down has almost reached its goal of 500 signatures.  Far-left website moveon.org has also created a petition asking for McCain to resign, albeit for different reasons. 

McCain won re-election to his seat in 2016; therefore, his term does not expire until 2022.  Arizona’s other Senate seat is on the ballot this fall at the same time the state’s Republican governor will run for re-election to a second term.  Incumbent Doug Ducey looks like he may have more trouble winning re-election than most people would think; polling has shown him trailing his likely Democratic opponent David Garcia in hypothetical general election match-ups.  Should McCain decide to resign or end up succumbing to his battle with cancer after the 2018 midterms, whoever emerges victorious in the 2018 gubernatorial election will get to pick his replacement. In most states, this would mean that the Democratic Governor would get to appoint a candidate of his choice, almost certainly from his party, to fill the vacancy.  However, Arizona state law requires that the Governor fill the vacancy with a member of the same political party as the Senator who most recently held the seat.  State law also requires a special election to take place at the time of the next regularly scheduled general election.  The deadline has already passed for McCain’s replacement to appear on the ballot for this year’s general election, meaning that the appointed Senator would serve until at least the 2020 general election; when neither Senate seat in Arizona would ordinarily appear on the ballot.  A poll released two weeks before the deadline found that a supermajority of Arizona Republicans wanted McCain to step down in time for the deadline so that voters could hold a special election choosing his successor this year.    

President Trump has many strong allies in Arizona, namely Former Congressman Matt Salmon, Former Governor Jan Brewer, and Kelli Ward, McCain’s primary challenger in 2016 currently running for the open Senate seat.  In other words, Ducey or his Democratic successor would have plenty of strong candidates to choose from.  Should Ducey end up losing his re-election bid, his Democratic successor could really stab Trump in the back by appointing Jeff Flake to fill the vacancy, who currently holds the other Senate seat in Arizona.  Flake initially decided to run for re-election to his Senate seat but ended up withdrawing from the race in October 2017.  Flake has emerged as a strong critic of the Trump Administration, writing an entire book criticizing it called Conscience of a Conservative, and denouncing the President’s attacks on the mainstream media during a speech on the Senate floor.  Not surprisingly, President Trump does not like Flake that much either; as evidenced by a series of tweets he sent out last summer.  In the first tweet, he praised Flake’s primary challenger Kelli Ward, saying “Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate.  He’s toxic!”  In the second tweet, given just after he gave a speech in the state, the President said “I love the Great State of Arizona. Not a fan of Jeff Flake, weak on crime & border!”  Flake ended up writing a check to Democratic Senate Candidate Doug Jones with the memo “Country over Party” and bragging about it on his Twitter page. Jones won a surprise victory in the deep red state of Alabama after decades-old sexual misconduct allegations surfaced against the Republican candidate, Roy Moore, who many Republicans already hated anyway.  Moore’s loss cut the GOP Senate majority from 52 to 51.  McCain’s absence has effectively further reduced their majority.             

The battle over control of the Senate may also influence President Trump’s decision when picking a Supreme Court nominee to replace the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.  President Trump has included Utah Senator Mike Lee on his shortlist and spoke with the Senator on the phone earlier this week.  Many think President Trump will not pick Lee because that will cause a Senate vacancy that could cost Republicans a vote.  However, Utah’s Republican Governor Gary Herbert would quickly fill the vacancy with another Republican until a special election takes place. 

The McCain debacle also highlights the value of term limits.  While term limits would not necessarily prevent old people from running for office, they would have meant that McCain’s tenure in the Senate would have ended way back in 1998, thus avoiding the situation Republicans in the Senate find themselves in now.  The Founders never saw public service as a lifetime profession.  Republicans brought up the idea of term limits a quarter century ago as part of the “Contract with America” that allowed Republicans to recapture the House majority for the first time in forty years.  McCain himself had supported term limits when the vote to end debate on the proposed Constitutional amendment took place in the Senate back in 1996.   Most term limits proposals, including the one brought up in the mid-1990s, call for Senators to serve a maximum of two six-year terms and House members to serve a maximum of six two-year terms.  Believe it or not, the idea of term limits may actually unite American voters on both sides of the political aisle, a rarity in the age of political polarization that currently describes American politics.  A 2013 poll from Gallup found that 75 percent of Americans of all political persuasions support term limits.  Perhaps keeping this in mind, Senator Ted Cruz and Rep. Ron DeSantis introduced a term limits bill at the beginning of the 115^th Congress that would limit Senators to two six-year terms and House members to three two-year terms; a proposal that ultimately went nowhere.  DeSantis has agreed to play by his own rules; he has decided not to seek a fourth term to the House of Representatives, instead opting to run for Governor of Florida.   

The opposition to term limits from members of Congress should not come as that much of a surprise.  After all, Former Republican Presidential Candidate Jeb Bush pointed out during one of the 2016 Presidential debates that members of the Senate work a “French work-week.”  Members of Congress also enjoy six-figure salaries and exemption from Obamacare.  Most Americans working in the private sector could only dream of getting such a good gig.  Working in the swamp really does have its benefits.

Hopefully, Senator McCain will decide to retire sooner rather than later, that way he can spend the remainder of his life enjoying time with his family.  At the same time, Republicans will hopefully have his essentially vacant Senate seat filled with someone committed to implementing the Trump agenda of building the wall, repealing Obamacare, switching to a merit-based immigration system and appointing conservative justices to the Supreme Court.  With all due respect to McCain, he often failed to rally behind these agenda items, as evidenced by his failure to support repealing Obamacare and his enthusiastic support of amnesty bills dubbed “comprehensive immigration reform” initiatives. To quote President Trump, the phrase “we’ll see what happens” applies to both the impending battle over President Trump’s Supreme Court pick and the potential fallout from a McCain resignation.  Let’s hope that whatever does happen will make it easier for President Trump and Republicans all across the country to implement the “Make America Great Again” agenda.