Republican Congressman Celebrates Veterans Day by Blaming John McCain for the GOP’s Midterm Losses
For more than half a century, Veterans Day has served as an opportunity for Americans to pay tribute to the men and women of the military, who made—and continue to make—tremendous personal sacrifices in service of their country and its values. Or, if you are one-term Minnesota Republican congressman Jason Lewis, it is the chance to pen a meandering Wall Street Journal op-ed in which you blame the late John McCain, who endured more than five years of torture in a Vietnam War prison camp, for your recent failed re-election bid. We all pay our respects in different ways, I suppose.
Lewis's thesis, to the extent that his writing contains a coherent thought that can be categorized as such, is that by voting against Mitch McConnell's "skinny repeal" bill in the summer of 2017, McCain enabled a domino effect of left-wing lies that Republicans, despite their best efforts during the midterm elections, simply could not overcome.
McCain’s last-minute decision prompted a “green wave” of liberal special-interest money, which was used to propagate false claims that the House plan “gutted coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.” That line was the Democrats’ most potent attack in the midterms.
It's an interesting theory from Lewis, a former conservative talk-radio host who once opined that women who use contraceptives are "sluts." One alternative explanation for asserting the GOP plan would have "gutted coverage for people with pre-existing conditions" is that, in fact, the GOP plan would have gutted coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. While Lewis notes that the American Health Care Act ostensibly barred insurers from denying coverage on that basis, it did not ban price discrimination. So if you have heart disease, or cancer, or diabetes, the bill would not have prevented you from obtaining health insurance; in many states, it simply would have made it prohibitively expensive to do so.
From there, Lewis—who does not believe that women who care about health-care policy have brains—recycles some tired Heritage Foundation–esque talking points about how the AHCA's tax credits and high-risk pools would have reduced the financial burden of procuring insurance among older and lower-income individuals. The Congressional Budget Office's determination that those credits would have amounted to a pittance next to the anticipated premiums increases, and that many Americans would have been functionally barred from the market as a result, does not seem to have made it into Lewis's final draft. (In Republican parlance, this is called "consumer choice," and it is a good thing, not a neutral-sounding term to describe a policy that hastens one's death.)
The precise contours of Lewis's repeatedly debunked policy arguments are less interesting than the context in which he chooses to attribute blame: on Veterans Day, and at the feet of John McCain. During the 115th Congress, Paul Ryan insisted on ramming a wildly unpopular bill through the House along party lines; the president egged him on enthusiastically; and then, in the days leading up to the election, McConnell publicly vowed to try again to repeal the Affordable Care Act if given the chance in the 116th Congress. Yet Lewis—who has pointed out that the rationale for legalizing same-sex marriage could also apply to legalizing slavery—believes that the person most responsible for the ballot-box shellacking that Republicans just endured is a party icon who is no longer around to defend himself.
The late Arizona senator’s grievance with all things Trump was well known, but this obsession on the part of “Never Trump” Republicans has to end. Disapprove of the president’s style if you like, but don’t sacrifice sound policy to pettiness.
This reads like it was written after spinning a giant prize wheel of Trumpian bogeymen, and publishing it is embarrassing even for an outfit that gainfully employs Kim Strassel. Combing through Lewis's archives and printing a transcript of any one of his misogynistic monologues would have preserved the tastelessness and vapidity of this op-ed, while also being a lot more intellectually honest.
The byline, which appears at the piece's conclusion, contains the only bits of information about Jason Lewis that are relevant anymore:
