Say It Ain’t So, Senator Sinema
There aren’t many bright spots in American politics these days, especially when one is peering inside the Beltway. The performance of my senior senator here in Arizona — Kyrsten Sinema — has been refreshing so far.
Sinema wrote an op-ed on Monday for The Washington Post reaffirming her opposition to ending the filibuster. Predictably, libs all over are triggered by this common sense, moderate approach to governing. She’s a woman who sticks to her principles, which is something I need to set up here before I get to the stuff mentioned in the headline.
From her op-ed:
It’s no secret that I oppose eliminating the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. I held the same view during three terms in the U.S. House, and said the same after I was elected to the Senate in 2018. If anyone expected me to reverse my position because my party now controls the Senate, they should know that my approach to legislating in Congress is the same whether in the minority or majority.
Once in a majority, it is tempting to believe you will stay in the majority. But a Democratic Senate minority used the 60-vote threshold just last year to filibuster a police reform proposal and a covid-relief bill that many Democrats viewed as inadequate. Those filibusters were mounted not as attempts to block progress, but to force continued negotiations toward better solutions.
That’s the kind of level-headed approach we aren’t seeing any of from Democratic leadership in either the Senate or House. Chuckles Schumer and Granny Boxwine are trying to wreak as much far-left havoc as they can before next year, when one or both of them could lose their majorities. It is a scorched-earth approach that doesn’t even seem to have much in common with other Democrats out here in Actual America.
That’s the Kyrsten Sinema I like.
Related: Kyrsten Sinema Has the Guts to Keep Annoying Her Fellow Democrats
Sinema was elected shortly after I moved back here from California, where my senators were Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris. You don’t know bad representation in the Senate until you finally get rid of Barbara Boxer only to have her replaced with someone even worse. Trust me, even on her most Democrat of days, Sinema is a breath of fresh air.
She also doesn’t whine all the time like Jeff Flake — the man she replaced — did. That’s another bonus.
A piece in Politico Playbook at the end of last week got me thinking that my fondness for Sinema may not last:
EMULATING MCCAIN — KYRSTEN SINEMA’S advisers heard it constantly from her during her 2018 campaign for Senate: “I want to be the next JOHN MCCAIN.”
After she won, Sinema called the late senator a “legend” and “my personal hero.” This year, when she voted against a minimum wage hike, she rankled the left by mimicking McCain’s iconic thumbs-down that tanked the GOP’s effort to kill Obamacare.
I voted enthusiastically for John McCain in 1986 and 1992. He was a solid conservative back in those days. Then I moved to California and the guy kind of went haywire. Blame me if you want, I’ll take the heat.
I even volunteered on that sinking ship of a campaign he ran against The Lightbringer in 2008. I was making phone calls to swing states all day on Election Day even though we all knew that the campaign had been over for a long time by then.
For reasons that still remain unclear to me, rather than tell the mainstream media to go you-know-what themselves after the way they treated him in the 2000 and 2008 presidential elections, John McCain spent his remaining days kissing the MSM’s big, ugly, liberal backside.
By the time I returned to my native state there wasn’t a conservative here who had anything nice to say about the guy.
From what I’ve seen so far, Kyrsten Sinema’s principles are pretty solid. I certainly don’t agree with all of them, but they don’t present themselves with a lot of wiggle room and variables. I know what to expect.
The John McCain of later years had only one principle: to make sure The New York Times was writing nice things about him.
In fact, the reason I think that Sinema will stick to her guns on the filibuster is precisely because she is not like John McCain. Her position is based on reasons that she’s elucidated over and over. She’s not being driven by a spiteful, petty desire to stick it to her own party, like McCain was with the Obamacare thing.
You do you, Senator Sinema. I’ll take whatever victories I can get from that.
Just please don’t turn into a malleable attention junkie like your “personal hero.”
Arizona had more than enough of that from Johnny Mac and the Flakester, thank you.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member