John McCain is a Coward for Continuing to Back Trump

When talking about the depths to which Donald Trump has lowered the political discourse in 2016, many people like to point to a famous “high-road” moment taken by then-GOP nominee John McCain at a 2008 event, when a pair of future Trump supporters called Obama “scary” and an “Arab.” You’ve probably seen it before:

McCain did the decent thing, refusing to paint Obama as a Muslim bogeyman, and this act is used to show how ugly Trump is each time he says Obama founded ISIS, or cheered after 9/11, or whatever.

McCain, of course, is sometimes referred to as a “maverick” Senator, and the fact that he didn’t instigate anti-Obama hysteria in 2008 only bolstered these credentials. He was supposed to be the guy who marched to the beat of his own drum, politics be damned…hell, he even co-authored veterans legislation with Bernie Sanders!

So, in 2016, with Trump representing everything vulgar and hateful about the conservative American electorate, where is the so-called maverick when you need him? Why is McCain still supporting a man whose values he obviously doesn’t share, and who is making a mockery of his party? And who, by the way, said McCain was a shitty soldier in the Vietnam War because he got captured—leading to horrific injuries and a hellish five-year POW stint that included physical and psychological torture.

A Politico story out today asks that question, and their answer is pretty simple: It’s politics, stupid. He doesn’t like to talk about Trump, but says over and that he’ll “support” him in the presidential contest, and it’s plain to see why—there are a lot of white Republican voters in border-state Arizona who have negative views of immigrants, and if McCain came out against the GOP nominee, he’d risk losing both his Senate primary against Kelli Ward (taking place this Tuesday) and the actual race in November against Ann Kirkpatrick. By staying silent, meanwhile, he can use his reputation and name recognition to coast to victory:

McCain has adopted a strategy apart from the “Never Trump” movement or even those like fellow Arizona GOP Sen. Jeff Flake, who frequently lambastes Trump. The two-time presidential hopeful is betting that he’s such a defined entity, with near-universal name ID, that most voters will treat his race as entirely separate from the suddenly competitive presidential campaign in Arizona.

So far, it’s working.

A recent CNN poll showed McCain hanging on to more than two-thirds of Trump voters and grabbing 28 percent of Hillary Clinton supporters, giving him a 13-point lead over Kirkpatrick in the general election. He crushed Ward in the same survey, 55 percent to 29 percent, though McCain, trying to lower expectations, said he expects to win in a manner that is “not great.”

Kirkpatrick, the Democrat opponent who says she used to vote for McCain, is milking his continued support for Trump for everything it’s worth.

“The fact that he continues to support Donald Trump in spite of the fact that Trump insulted him, in spite of the fact that Trump insulted a Gold Star family, shows that he’s changed,” she told Politico, all but calling McCain a sell-out. “There was a day that he would have stood up for that family, would have stood up for himself. It’s baffling to me that he continues to support Trump in spite of the horrible racist, sexist, discriminating things that Trump said.”

Meanwhile, each new outrageous statement coming out of Trump’s mouth makes McCain’s life harder, as he tries to maintain his near-silent “support” position even as his refusal to disavow chips at his reputation. It may be a smart political move, but it’s also the cowardly move. More than anything else—possibly even more than choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate—it should put the lie to the idea that McCain is any kind of “independent maverick.” He remains what he’s always been—an ambitious opportunist more than willing to put political calculations ahead of whatever principles he supposedly holds dear.