Martha McSally looks small over her snub of John McCain

Opinion: Martha McSally, in her snub of John McCain, demonstrates that politics and personal ambition trump decency every time.

Laurie Roberts
The Republic | azcentral.com
U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, a Republican vying for her party's U.S. Senate nomination, speaks during a campaign pitch to the Palo Verde Republican Women at Lush Burger in Scottsdale on May 20, 2018.

As if we didn’t already know it, now comes more stinking proof that in an election year, politics and personal ambition trump (little t) all.

Consider Rep. Martha McSally’s repeated trumpeting over the last 24 hours of her support for and attendance at Monday’s signing of the National Defense Authorization Act.

Or, as it’s actually called, the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2019.

We should expect better of McSally

It was no surprise when President Donald Trump, in signing the bill during a ceremony at Fort Drum in New York, refused to follow the lead of Congress and even mention, much less pay homage to the former POW and longtime senator who has spent his life serving in and supporting the military.

McCain, in Trump’s eyes, is an enemy combatant and thus unworthy of even the slightest decency even now, as he battles a vicious disease that will undoubtedly take his life.

But I would have expected more from a congresswoman from Arizona.

Instead we get this:

And we get this:

And we get this: 

And we get this:

And we get this:

And we get this: 

And we get a self promoting press release that runs 549 words – not one of which is McCain.

“I'm working with President Trump to rebuild our military and grow our defense assets to ensure we continue to have the strongest military in the world,” she said in the press release. “We are repairing the harm done by the Obama Administration, which cut funding to our military and vital defense assets for almost a decade. We are restoring readiness and increasing capability and capacity in a force that has been asked to do too much with too little for too long. The NDAA gives our troops a much-deserved raise; provides funding for the A-10s based at Davis-Monthan; supports the F-35s based at Luke AFB and Marine Corps Air Station Yuma; and also provides millions for base upgrades.”

She couldn't spare a few words for McCain?

She couldn’t spare one stinking sentence to honor the home-state senator for whom the bill was named?

It wasn't until two days later -- after Meghan McCain read the online version of this column and bashed McSally's "disgraceful" silence on Twitter -- that McSally finally mentioned McCain and even then, she took a page from Trump's playbook and blamed the media for bringing it up.

The NDAA bill -- or as it's actually called, the John S McCain NDAA bill -- was about our troops. But it was also about paying tribute to McCain. Sadly, it took McSally two days and a public shaming before McSally tweeted this (no doubt with clenched teeth):

Really, was I expecting too much from McSally, in all of her tweets and interviews and her press release, to spare one sentence to note that the bill was named for a guy who has served his state for three decades and his country for far longer?

I know McSally is running hard to win the Republican nomination for the Senate, and that McCain is hardly a fan favorite among conservative voters.

I know that she, along with her GOP opponents Kelli Ward and Joe Arpaio, crave and bask in any good word from Trump, who despises McCain.

But snubbing McCain in a desperate attempt to win a few votes or a presidential pat on the head?

That’s something I wouldn’t have expected from a former combat pilot, who once upon a time must have had a backbone.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com.

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