An American Lion

The Bear Went Over the Mountain and Tweeted About It

Is it any wonder that the Republican Party is foundering?

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday rebuked the AARP for opposing his amendment to rollback many of the Medicare changes Democrats included in their healthcare bill.

Tweeted McCain shortly after his proposal was defeated on a 58-42 vote:

“I call on seniors to cut up their AARP cards and send them back to them!”

In effect, McCain’s measure, first proposed on Tuesday, would have killed the Senate’s healthcare bill. The amendment would have sent the proposal back to the Senate Finance Committee with instructions that lawmakers remove its Medicare provisions.

That measure, however, quickly earned the AARP’s scorn. Its CEO announced in a statement on Wednesday that the lobby opposed McCain’s amendment out of fear it could derail healthcare reform writ large.

“The legislation before the Senate properly focuses on provider reimbursement reforms to achieve these important policy objectives,” CEO A. Barry Rand said Wednesday. “Most importantly, the legislation does not reduce any guaranteed Medicare benefits.”

Essentially, then, McCain’s attempt at introducing a poison pill failed. His hamfisted lack of finesse at legislating blew up in his face (how long had he been planning this attack? Five minutes?) and before one of his aides could slap the BlackBerry out of his hands and sit on him in the cloak room, he flew into a rage and used Twitter. That’s always a recipe for a blog post.

What I don’t understand about our current political situation is this: few, if any, seniors are going to do what John McCain tells them to do. Sure, you have the feeble and the confused, but if I went on television and told them that wearing a crown made out of beef jerky and corn bread would cure arthritis, fifty thousand seniors would give up their credit card numbers to me in five minutes.

The man has no influence whatsoever. The fact that he got a few Democrats to vote for his amendment, but couldn’t get it passed, should indicate that he maybe got some sympathy votes but had no shot at accomplishing what he wanted to accomplish, which was to make himself a relevant player on an issue that he has *zero* presence, experience, or credibility talking or legislating about. I mean, John McCain is going to tackle health care reform in the Senate? Really? And he’s been doing the heavy lifting on this subject since when?

My problem is this: Democrats are afraid of John McCain? They’re afraid of what he might say? Really? That doesn’t necessarily make McCain the joke. It makes a joke out of anyone who might curry his favor.