As Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal points out today, the late John McCain was, for decades, cheered by the media as a national hero for bucking his party. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, on the other hand, has been branded a democracy-busting traitor for slowing the Democrats’ unprecedented $5 trillion welfare-state reconciliation bill.
There’s a new talking point pushing back against this comparison. Sahil Kapur at NBC News — along with other lefty journalists — argue that unlike McCain, who “talked to with reporters all the time and was forthcoming about his policy views, popular or not,” Sinema does not.
Well, why does Sinema have to be in front of journalists “all the time”? So they can badger her for the billionth time about gutting the filibuster? Back in July, Sinema announced that she supported the bipartisan infrastructure plan but was opposed to the price tag of $3.5 trillion on the reconciliation bill. That same month, she wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post detailing her position on the filibuster. Her stance is neither unexpected nor unexplained.
Progressive like to pretend that Chuck Schumer has no idea what Sinema wants. This contention seems highly unlikely, considering the Arizona senator was one of the leading negotiators on the infrastructure bill. And, of course, for weeks, we heard the same accusation leveled at Joe Manchin, until someone leaked a memo that showed Schumer had been lying the entire time.
These attacks tie in with the allegation that Sinema is undermining “democracy” by not properly representing or communicating with her constituents in Arizona — a state Biden won by .3 percent. (What happened to country above party?) And, of course, if we adopted this new standard, the weak-kneed West Virginia senator wouldn’t be involved in any of these negotiations at all. But Democrats — the party that tells you that the most expensive bill in the history of mankind costs “zero” — are inventing new rules, standards, and definitions as they go along.