When shrieking liberal protesters went low, John McCain went high – Washington Examiner

It took a little more than a year for Glioblastoma to kill Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. Beau Biden, the son of the last vice president, held it off for about three years. More than likely, the cancer will soon claim the life of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Realistically then, McCain is a dead-man walking and that's what makes his speech on the Senate floor Tuesday so remarkable -- and some of his critics so despicable.

Listening to McCain speak, one would doubt his dangerous medical prognosis. Shortly after confronting his own mortality, he decided to try tackling some of the Senate's most enduring problems like blind faction, a broken deliberative process, and brutally-raw political power.

It was the kind of speech only Jimmy Stewart, or for that matter John McCain, could deliver. And it had the qualities we want from our politicians: bipartisanship, intelligence, and, most of all, bravery.

Listening to the opposition, though, it's easy to wonder if honest deliberation is even possible anymore.

"Are you ashamed of the legacy you're going to be leaving the Republican Party with, one hell-bent on the destruction of the poor and the disabled?" one woman shrieked, summarizing the liberal position.

"Are you going to die and leave us with this legacy?" she taunted as McCain walked to the Senate floor.

While that was the verbal assault on Capitol Hill, plenty of liberals didn't hold back on Twitter either. For example:

To be fair, not every liberal was on board with trashing McCain.

In a particularly classy bipartisan gesture, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., walked over and actually embraced the senator after the speech.

A class act through it all, McCain didn't flinch. Most likely at the end of his career and possibly his life, the elder statesman offered instead the picture of dignity. One wonders if that calm will succeed McCain in the great deliberative body or if it will be drowned out by the contempt we witnessed today by protesters.

Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

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When shrieking liberal protesters went low, John McCain went high - Washington Examiner