This is long but an excellent read about Senator John McCain as the elder statesman of the Republican Party (see How Many Chances Do You Get to Be an American Hero?).
I met someone recently who made a comment that we needed to remove people like McCain from the party. I disagreed because the GOP needs those who are willing to speak out, even when it’s uncomfortable — and I have certainly not agreed with McCain about everything throughout the years.
His time as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, mocked during the 2016 presidential campaign by Donald Trump who did not serve in the military, shaped and influenced McCain’s path for the rest of his life.
“I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s,” he said during his nomination acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican convention. “I loved it for its decency, for its faith in the wisdom, justice, and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again; I wasn’t my own man anymore; I was my country’s.”
He is and has been America’s hawk with Russia which, amazingly, puts him sideways with the current administration. And lest anyone think he is picking on Trump, he has been the checks-and-balances, some would say thorn in the side, for each Republican president. He’s not called the Maverick for nothing.
Right now, as McCain stands up to the current situation in D.C., he is mostly alone. Writer Gabriel Sherman said, “I asked McCain why most of his fellow Republicans aren’t speaking up about Russia’s election interference and Trump’s potential Russian ties. ‘I frankly don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s not a chapter of Profiles in Courage.’ “
LynnRMitchell.com 