I should have known better than to give John McCain the benefit of the doubt

I understand that Graham-Cassidy is still weak tea. I understand its hail-Mary nature. I understand that it still takes the heavy-handed approach to preexisting conditions.

But as I said a couple of days ago, it's an improvement over the last couple of shots at this, and opens the door to further moves that, if the stars aligned properly, could get us to repeal.

The "A"CA is not working. I don't give a damn what David Axelrod and Jimmy Kimmel say. It's utterly worthless for most American citizens.

I gave John McCain the benefit of the doubt on the last go-round, because I thought it was a case of tweedle-dum-tweedle-dee. Not enough better than the "A"CA to get shook about.

But this is an improvement over that. It moves the damn needle.

So now, I'm back to harboring the contempt for the Arizona senator that I had in 08, when he spent his presidential campaign showing the country, rather ostentatiously, how ate up he was with Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome he was ("let us remember that those across the aisle are not our enemies" - perhaps the most unnecessary statement a politician ever uttered).

He has squelched the last remaining chance to stem the tide of socialized health care in post-America:

McCain said he could not support the bill "without knowing how much it will cost, how it will effect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it. Without a full CBO score, which won’t be available by the end of the month, we won’t have reliable answers to any of those questions.”

“I take no pleasure in announcing my opposition. Far from it,” he continued. “The bill’s authors are my dear friends, and I think the world of them. I know they are acting consistently with their beliefs and sense of what is best for the country. So am I.”

Doesn't his service in the Navy, particularly in Vietnam, outweigh the damage he's done since? I know it does for Mona Charen, who wrote an undeniably consideration-worthy tribute to him in that vein at NRO this week. 

But consider what someone wrote in the comment thread underneath it:

While he was imprisoned in Vietnam, McCain's wife was disfigured in a car accident. McCain didn't like his wife's lost looks. In 1979 — while still married to Carol — he met the much-younger (and very wealthy) Cindy Hensley at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country to see her and abandoning his suffering wife. He managed to divorce her and marry Cindy five weeks later. Quite consistent with McCain's "character."

But I don't wish to digress too much. My real point here is his failure, due to his lack of anything approaching consistent conservatism, to see a big enough picture to realize that he blew the last shot we had to make a significant change in the foreseeable future.

And about that CBO scoring, Tyler Cowen has this to say:

The CBO has estimated that the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal path, and over time will need to choose some significant mix of tax increases and spending cuts. Graham-Cassidy looks bad because it accelerates some of those fiscal adjustments, but American health-care consumption will end up being curtailed anyway.

There is an unfortunate tendency of Obamacare defenders to pick and choose which CBO messages they publicize. If the CBO estimates that a Republican health-care bill will cut insurance coverage, that estimate is played up. But when the CBO surveys the nation’s longer-term fiscal conditions, that is downplayed for fear it will discourage moves toward bigger government. 

He's not doing this for principle-driven reasons. I can forgive Rand Paul, because he is a free-market purist and I'm pretty much one myself. McCain just being a stinking maverick, and there's nothing cute about it.