A Maverick of the Right

Media has been buzzing today about John McCain’s vote against the “skinny repeal” of the Affordable Care Act. While McCain is on record saying that he would still like to repeal the bill and only disagreed with the way in which this was pursued, it hasn’t stopped much mainstream coverage to focus on his “maverick” brand, his image as Republican who charts his own way. This image has been debunked thoroughly.

Still, it’s an important idea to consider. McCain earned this reputation largely through his opposition to Bush-era torture policy and immigration reform — in other words, for being a moderate Republican and not completely unreasonable human being who opposes inhumane punishment and talks about immigrants as being people too.

That this makes him a “maverick” in his party should alarm us at what its “mainstream” has become. We need to understand McCain-as-maverick in the context of the realignment of the Republican party to its extreme right. McCain, a serious conservative, is becoming an outsider as Democrats move to his position (recall that ACA was Mitt Romney’s plan before it became Obama’s) while the GOP shifts to include fascists in its electoral coalition.

History of the Right

Daily analysis of the contemporary right from a PhD candidate in History at UC Berkeley

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