[jwplayer config=”pjm_michaelwalsh” mediaid=”2196″]

Here’s everybody’s favorite “conservative Republican” senator, John McCain, once again showing why he’s the most overrated man in Congress, and why it’s long past time for him to resign and leave the country he’s served so poorly in peace:

“I don’t understand it,” said McCain on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “The purpose of the United States Senate is to debate and to vote and to let the people know where we stand.” “What are we afraid of? Why would we not want… if this issue is as important as all of us think it is, why not take it to one of the world’s greatest deliberative bodies – that’s one of the greatest exaggerations in history by the way – but you know why not take it up, an amendment and debate. The American people will profit from it,” said the Arizona senator. “I don’t understand why United States senators want to block debate when the leaders said we could have amendments,” McCain added.

Stop right there and back up, senator: The “purpose” of the U.S. Senate is to debate and vote and let the people know where you stand? Um, no. The purpose is for you to do what the people of your state tell you to do. And in McCain’s case, that would be the people of Arizona. (Repeal the 17th Amendment!) And the people of Arizona have already stated, loud and clear, where they stand on the Second Amendment:

“The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the State shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain, or employ an armed body of men.” Arizona State Constitution, Article 2, Section 26.

I understand that McCain thinks of himself as a national figure, the Guy Who Ran for President (and was handily defeated by a no-name freshman colleague from the ultra-corrupt Chicago Machine), but the fact remains that like his pal Chuck Schumer in the video above, the Senator from Keating has a glorified view of himself and his own imaginary moral rectitude.

Adding insult to injury, at practically the same time McCain was snuggling up next to a figure of almost comic malevolence in Schumer, the man who beat him in 2008 was gratuitously insulting the very state of Arizona McCain supposedly represents:

As President Barack Obama hit the road Wednesday to press for tougher federal gun laws, he singled out Arizona. In a tweet, the commander-and-chief had this to say about the Grand Canyon State: “FACT: Almost twice as many people were murdered by guns from 2001-2010 in Arizona than killed in combat in Afghanistan. #DemandAction” The president was referring to a new report that ranks Arizona as having the 4th highest level of gun violence in the country.

That “report,” by the way, was issued by the George Soros-funded, not-at-all-partisan Center for American Progress, which bills itself as fostering “progressive ideas for a strong, just and free America” and is run by former Clinton hack, John Podesta. I’ll leave it up to some of my PJ colleagues to analyze the report.

In the meantime, it’s simply time for McCain to get off the national stage. He’s been a thorn in the side of whomever’s been unlucky enough to come in contact with him all his life: ask any naval officer his or her candid opinion of McCain and you will get an earful. For reasons known only to himself — and perhaps not even to himself — the “maverick” McCain is his own best friend, always willing to sell out his pals to the enemy, perhaps in the vain hope that his tormentors will finally be nice to him.

They won’t, of course; Schumer will stab him in the back the minute it’s politically expedient. The Democrats play rough and they play to win; McCain is the perfect Useful Idiot, whom they’re happy to embrace when he agrees with them in the name of “bipartisanship” and equally happy to savage when his usefulness is at an end.

But McCain’s the only one not in on the joke. He’s too busy calling far better men than he “wacko birds,” and collaborating with the Left as part of the Gang of Eight, who seem to think it’s perfectly okay for them to hammer out a “bipartisan” immigration deal and then present it to the rest of us as a fait accompli. So much for debate and deliberation.

If there’s a better argument for term limits than John McCain — at least on the nominally Republican side — I can’t imagine who it would be. First elected in 1986, McCain survived a primary challenge from former Congressman J.D. Hayworth in 2010, mostly by changing his positions on things like illegal immigration, in order to make himself appear to be more conservative than he actually is.

Alas, the Establishment rallied to his side, with the unhappy result that we now can’t get rid of him until the election of 2016. “I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities,” McCain said in his last campaign. If he really cared about the people of Arizona — not to mention the people of America — he’d do the honorable thing and resign before he can do any more damage to the country he professes to love.

