John McCain is an old friend. I don't know him but I covered his presidential campaign and know more about him than about most anyone else. He is a gambler. He is exactly my age. He was obstreperous when young. And he sometimes comes through like his pal Lindsay Graham. Here is the story.

A perfect excuse

On Friday John McCain sucked it up and went in and had a clot removed from above an eye. That sounds bad but for a McCain, it is all in a day's work. What the operation, doubtless on the exclusive Congress health plan, does is give the GOP a pretext to do what it should have done in the first place.

Delay the vote on the Trumpcare travesty. Create a bipartisan process to fix Obamacare. Give the GOP an excuse to avoid the issue some more.

That is my interpretation of the McCain statement you will not find unless you go to the last paragraph of the article in the embedded tweet below.

What is wonderful about this entirely unsubtle process is that McCain has utterly exposed Mitch McConnell for the sad specimen he has become -- a Trump-Pence gofer trying to ride a lie into a national con that will hurt millions.

McCain's indictment

Here is the text of McCain's suggestion quoted in today's NY Times lead story.

His statement politely allies himself with the anti-Obamacare forces but then concludes with a bald contradiction. "If we are not able to reach a consensus," he says, "the Senate should return to Regular Order, hold hearings and receive input from senators of both parties, and produce a bill that finally provides Americans with access to affordable and quality health care."

Sanity on the table

You be the judge.

Returning to regular order is like advising McConnell to repent of the last eight and more years of disorder he has fomented as majority leader. This terrible Trumpcare bill has been a symphony of chaos and disorder.

The Gorsuch confirmation was a first-use nuclear incursion to enable a one party OK of a man guaranteed to be everything an antediluvian Breitbart supporter could hope for.

The indignities persist back to his stated unwillingness even to listen to an Obama proposal.

Bipartisan heresy

The call for a bipartisan process is McCain;s death blow to Trumpcare. McCain is saying do not let this monstrosity represent me. And of course, John McCain uses the Obama keyword "affordable" which is a no-no to both McConnell and Trump. John McCain is very rich. He has lots of houses. But he has just iced Trumpcare with a nice excuse Mitch can use to cover over his perfidy. Viva John.
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