Imagine a man holding a flashlight in broad daylight, screaming at the sun for not doing its job.
That’s what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries looked like this week when he solemnly demanded that Senate Republicans find the “John McCain levels of courage” to oppose President Trump’s budget agenda.
It wasn’t just political theater.
It was historical malpractice.
And worse, it was a moral sleight of hand.
Jeffries wasn’t praising McCain for courage; he was weaponizing a name Republicans have long stopped revering to emotionally blackmail them into self-destruction.
But to understand why this appeal is absurd, one must understand both the man he cited and the man he despises.
McCain: War Hero, Yes. Conservative Icon? Not Quite.
On the American Right, John McCain is viewed with complex, often strained respect.
Yes, he was a war hero.
Yes, he suffered brutally in the Hanoi Hilton.
And yes, he spent decades in the Senate.
But that résumé cannot mask what many conservatives believe: he rarely fought for the core tenets of modern conservatism.
He sided with Democrats far too often.
He was the architect of campaign finance reform that choked free speech.
He obsessed over foreign intervention.
And most famously, he cast the thumbs-down vote in 2017 that sabotaged President Trump’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, after Republicans had campaigned for a decade on that very promise.
And then there’s the Keating Five scandal.
While McCain avoided formal charges, he was very much involved in protecting Charles Keating, the banking executive whose collapse cost taxpayers billions. The Senate Ethics Committee rebuked McCain’s judgment.
That doesn’t make him a criminal, but it certainly doesn’t make him a moral compass.
If Jeffries wanted to invoke a principled Republican, he might have turned to Calvin Coolidge, or even Barry Goldwater.
But McCain?
That’s a choice designed to poke a wound, not to bridge a divide.
Selective Amnesia: What Jeffries Conveniently Ignores
John McCain’s dramatic thumbs-down vote in July 2017 wasn’t courage; it was a carefully staged performance. He was driven by bitterness, ego, and long-standing personal resentment toward Donald Trump.
It was McCain’s final middle finger to a president he loathed and a base he no longer respected.
And it cost the GOP its shot at fulfilling one of its most sacred campaign promises: repealing Obamacare.
Let’s be blunt.
For eight years, Republican candidates coasted into office on pledges to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Voters rallied, donated, and knocked on doors on the belief that once Republicans held the House, Senate, and White House, they would finally dismantle the failed experiment that raised premiums, gutted plans, and punished middle-class families.
But when the moment arrived, McCain took the stage, not as a unifier, but as a self-anointed conscience of the Senate.
After years of voting to repeal Obamacare when Obama was president, he suddenly found it unacceptable to do so once it could be repealed.
Why?
Because Trump offended him.
Because of a feud that started with Trump’s offhand remark about McCain being a “war hero because he was captured.”
That personal slight metastasized into a political vendetta.
The result: millions of Americans remained trapped in a system they despised, all because one man wanted to rewrite his obituary on the Senate floor.
Jeffries calling that “courage” is like calling Benedict Arnold’s switch to the British “patriotism.”
It wasn’t about principle.
It was about payback.
The Current Senate GOP Isn’t Buying the Bait
Jeffries is clearly stuck in 2017.
Today’s Republican Senate is not made up of squishy moderates hoping for Washington Post puff pieces.
The mood has changed.
The gloves are off.
The Trump era didn’t just shift the Overton window; it shattered it, and built a fortress on the rubble.
Senators such as J.D. Vance openly rejected the globalist, donor-class agenda that once defined both parties. While in the Senate, he talked about foreign aid the way McCain used to talk about earmarks with disgust.
Josh Hawley is now leading the charge on China, Big Tech, and family policy. He’s not afraid to call out corporate collusion, even when it rattles his own party.
Tom Cotton speaks with prosecutorial precision, often cornering witnesses, exposing lies, and torching political theater with well-prepared facts.
But the energy isn’t just in those names.
Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri made waves by hammering the Biden DOJ over censorship and overreach.
Senator Ted Cruz remains a legal bulldog, crafting the kind of constitutional arguments that leave left-wing pundits stammering.
Senator Mike Lee remains the conscience of limited government and judicial integrity.
Even moderates such as Senator Ron Johnson and Senator Rick Scott have grown more combative, using hearings to expose COVID lies, border failures, and the government’s role in fueling inflation.
Republican senators today are not just resisting pressure to abandon Trump.
They’re embracing the populist momentum he created.
They’ve been censored, threatened, and called “insurrectionists” for daring to challenge the regime’s narratives.
They know they’re not playing badminton. It’s a bare-knuckle brawl now. And Jeffries’ soft-spoken plea to be more like McCain?
That's about as smart as lighting a match in a black powder factory.
If You Have to Beg Enemies to Come, It's Too Late
Jeffries's move screamed confusion and signaled weakness. There's no map, breaks, or toll money.
The left's last leader, former President Joseph Robinette Biden, gets lost in closets, falls upstairs, and yells. All of the time.
Kamala Harris? Let's not go there.
The people on the left are as shallow as sinkwater. Take a look around. Governors Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer haven't found a despotic rule they don't like. Pete Buttigieg, beard and all, is as firm as an empty 12-pack in the potholes back home.
For the first time in a generation, there is internal strife within the Democratic Party.
The Squad is fighting everybody, as usual. The old guard is quietly panicking as they slurp their protein drinks.
Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters are slipping away as quickly as a World War II diesel sub.
The youth vote is losing its love for Bernie, while questions about immigration and inflation are coming from an unlikely source: union households.
For an entire party to have a single message, "Orange Man Bad," is as redundant as watching "A Christmas Story" all Christmas Day.
Since he couldn't draw on anything compelling or introduce a new character, Jeffries sought out a ghost. McCain's specter appeared to him in a crystal ball.
Calling upon the dead rarely works in the movies, but since so much money comes from Hollywood, he at least had a script.
If you need Republicans to turn on voters, especially after the 2024 election, they're drinking other people's bathwater.
Yelling at the Sun Because Your Bag is Empty is No Way to Run a Party
Hakeem Jeffries is out in his yard, midday, standing in full sunlight, waving that flashlight as if it's visible in a fog. He thinks it's a laser, and that we all should be impressed by his moral clarity.
It's not real.
It's not even good.
It's as fake as a $3 bill.
We live in an era of heightened indignation, not just from the metropolitan media, but also from the creatures in Congress.
Jeffries believes himself to be this century's version of Shakespeare when, in fact, he is closer to Mel Brooks. He's weak, out of options, and, to be honest, quite funny.
For years, he blasts Trump as a tinpot dictator in a third-world country. Trump is a man who incites, and is a direct threat to everybody's freedom.
Jeffries wants to earn support from Republicans without seeing poll after poll in support of the adults in charge.
He's as bad as dropping a washer in a beggar's cup.
Jefferies doesn't seek anything but control. Control of not just his party, but of the messaging to the unwashed, that he's the brave soul crying out in the wilderness.
Because he has no hold on anything, he reaches for a false symbol of bravery, a man who betrayed his party and president.
What he didn't count on was not hiding the card up his sleeve well enough. Not just do Republicans in the Senate see it, the president sees it, and we see it.
If the minority leader keeps waving that flashlight, he'd better buy rechargeable batteries.
