Cindy McCain isn’t going to save you from Trump. Stop waiting for a Republican white knight

This republic will not be saved by good-hearted Republicans. They simply do not exist

Manifestación del presidente estadounidense Donald Trump en Fayetteville el sábado (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Today, Cindy McCain, the widow of long-time Republican Senator John McCain, made appearances on a number of morning news shows to formally endorse Democratic presidential nominee and former vice president, Joe Biden. “My husband John lived by a code: country first. We are Republicans, yes, but Americans foremost,” she wrote afterwards, via Twitter. “There’s only one candidate in this race who stands for our values as a nation, and that is Joe Biden.” 

McCain’s endorsement came on the heels of Republican Senator Mitt Romney’s decision to vote on Trump’s eventual Supreme Court Justice nominee to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — despite the precedent set by Republicans in 2016 that blocked then-President Barack Obama from nominating Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court eight months before the election. Unlike many of his GOP colleagues, who have all but abandoned common decency and morality to better serve Trump and his anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant agenda, Romney has been a somewhat consistent, if not docile, critic of the president. In 2016, Romney said of then-candidate Trump “lacks the temperament to be president” and is “a con man, a fake.” As a result, many a Democratic voter held out hope that Romney would do the right thing and hold members of his party to their word: that there would be no vote on a Supreme Court nominee during an election year.  
But he didn’t. Because he’s a Republican. 

The idea that there’s a “white knight” member of the GOP willing to forego their endless pursuit of unbridled political power — and, let’s face it, the chance to strip the constitutional right to access abortion care from millions of pregnant people —  is as laughable as it is doomed. There are no decent Republicans, and that includes McCain and the nearly 100 permanent members of the so-called “rule of law” party that have endorsed a Democrat for president. 

In that same 2016 speech in which Romney lambasted Trump, he also said, “Now, not every policy that Donald Trump has floated is bad, of course. He wants to repeal and replace Obamacare.” And now, in the midst of a global pandemic that has already claimed the lives of over 200,000 Americans, Trump and Romney have their chance. The Supreme Court is set to rule on a case that could decimate the Affordable Care Act, leaving an estimated 24 million Americans without access to affordable health care during an unparalleled public health crisis. The means, it seems, justify their inhumane end.

Which is why Senator Lindsey Graham felt confident telling his Democratic colleagues that they could “use my own words against me” when he swore he’d follow the precedent his party set in 2016: because he knows that the Republican party is not built on a foundation of ethics or morals or honor, but deceit and hypocrisy. When a party claims to use the compass of “small government” to guide their legislative practices but is actively working to allow the government to force people to give birth, lying is a feature, not a bug. When Graham said, “If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination,” he was arguably, oh-so silently telling himself, "And if I change my mind and you do use my words against me, it won’t matter.” And he was right. It doesn’t. 

From former Senator Jeff Flake to former defense secretary James Mattis to John Bolton to  Anthony Scaramucci, so-called “defiant” Republicans speak out more for personal gain — be it to champion an upcoming book or secure another spot on CNN — than out of some moral obligation. It isn’t until it’s too late or they have nothing to lose or the blowback from other Republicans still in power is less severe that these so-called “champions of decency” find it in their heart of hearts to say or do anything.

I have no doubt McCain is sincere in her endorsement of Biden. She has commented often on her husband’s “unlikely friendship” with Biden, and has gone on the record to say “there is no voice of reason” within the Republican party. She also broke with her husband on abortion rights during his presidential bid, telling CBS News in 2008 that she did not want to see Roe v Wade overturned. When told that her husband did want to revoke abortion rights, she responded, “No, I don’t think he does.” She also endorsed marriage equality, despite her late husband’s opposition to the idea that any two people should have their love legally acknowledged. 

But I am equally convinced that her endorsement is a personal one. Her husband was and continues to be a consistent target of the president’s, even in death. Would she have vocally opposed a Republican president who didn’t bully her family members from the Oval Office? Would she have endorsed a Democratic president who vowed to uphold abortion rights if his Republican opposition didn’t call her husband a loser?  


Of course, there’s no way of knowing for sure. All the Republicans who ran against Trump in 2016 lost, and despite many of them labeling Trump as a “pathological liar” and a “xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot” who “can’t be trusted with common sense,” they’ve fallen in line behind him for their own personal and political gain. 

But what is undeniable is the knowledge that this republic will not be saved by good-hearted Republicans. They simply do not exist. It is up to us — the people — to remove them from their positions of power. We must save ourselves.