After Promising Repeal and Replace ObamaCare to Win Re-Election, McCain and Murkowski Do the Opposite

What's the chance either will lead any viable coalition for a genuine ObamaCare replacement that actually delivers on their promise for better health care? ZERO!

When John McCain was running for President he visited the Mike's America neighborhood in November 2007. I had the opportunity in a small gathering to ask him about his compromises with Democrats which betrayed key conservative principles. McCain was adamant that compromise would yield results. Whether it was immigration or federal judges McCain's compromises always gave Democrats what they wanted and left conservatives with little or nothing. When I challenged him he declared that if anyone disagreed "I am not your candidate and you should vote for someone else." I did vote for someone else in the primary. And all this Democrat friends who praised him when he helped them win on several issues didn't support him either in the general election of 2008.

Rather than learn from that experience McCain did it again by torpedoing the "skinny repeal" of ObamaCare that would have allowed House and Senate leaders to craft a new bill. Again, he's the hero of the left for a day from the same people who would never vote for him.

For the people of Arizona who did vote for him and who suffer from triple digit increase in ObamaCare this year McCain's move left them paying the bill! This despite his many promises to repeal and replace:

For Alaska voters, Lisa Murkowski's betrayal is just as bad. At Investor's Business Daily a commentary on both:

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, for example, wrote multiple op-eds for her hometown papers decrying what ObamaCare had done to her state, and vowing to repeal it, in the run-up to her 2016 re-election. In one she wrote that "the Affordable Care Act has unfortunately become one of the most ironically named pieces of legislation for Alaska in history."

In a floor speech in May 2016, she claimed that "I have consistently supported full repeal of the ACA and have voted to do so on several occasions. I have recognized that it is going to be difficult, if not impossible, to do so with this administration." She voted for the repeal bill in 2015.

But this week, Murkowski voted against every single version of ObamaCare repeal. She even voted against a "skinny" repeal that would have only ditched the law's individual and employer mandates and suspended the tax on medical devices — a tax that is so harmful to that industry that even uber-liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants it repealed.

Murkowski was joined by Sen. John McCain, who ended up being the decisive vote killing the skinny repeal bill — after voting for broader repeal bills that he knew in advance would fail.

Just a year before saving ObamaCare, however, McCain was vigorously attacking the law to win a tough reelection campaign. As Politico put it in a June 2016 article: "In fight of his political life, McCain hammers ObamaCare"

One of his 2016 campaign ads said "ObamaCare is failing Arizonans," and that "John McCain is leading the fight to stop ObamaCare."

Last February McCain introduced a bill to "fully" repeal ObamaCare and replace it with a "free-market approach that strengthens the quality and accessibility of care."

After voting Thursday night against the skinny repeal bill, McCain said it was because the bill "fell short of our promise to repeal & replace ObamaCare w/meaningful reform."

But McCain knows full well that the skinny repeal bill was meant to keep the process going to the next step — reconciliation with the more expansive House repeal-and-replace bill. Voting against skinny repeal has effectively stopped the ObamaCare repeal train in its tracks.

Do McCain and Murkowski have a plan and a process to bring Democrats along without betraying their voters and the conservative principles both Senators ran on for re-election? Let's just say that McCain's track record suggests otherwise!