ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Republicans in the Senate say John McCain’s death has opened a door for a new Obamacare repeal vote, and are pressing Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to appoint someone who swings that way.

Better yet: Appoint someone who doesn’t do like McCain and profess, right around election time, to hate Obamacare and promise its repeal and then, right around winning election time, vote to keep it intact.

“John McCain ran on repealing Obamacare,” wrote Robert Robb, in the Arizona Republic Opinion section, back in September of 2017. “He broke his promise.”

Yes, indeed.

And as Robb’s piece, picked up by USA Today, went on to note: “McCain has twice scuttled Republican attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare. … This is one instance in which President Trump’s criticisms of McCain are well-founded. McCain did run, as Trump is drumming, on a strong repeal-and-replace platform. In fact, it was the principal distinction he drew with his Democratic opponent, Ann Kirkpatrick. He would vote to repeal Obamacare. She would not.”

Yet McCain, as everybody and their sisters know, was the one who would not.

“John McCain hated Obamacare, but ultimately saved it,” weighed in Emmarie Huetteman, writing for Kaiser Health News in ABC just this week.

“Many will remember McCain as the incidental savior of the Affordable Care Act, whose late-night thumbs-down vote halted his party’s most promising effort to overturn a majority Democratic achievement,” the analysis went on to state.

Quite right; that is one of his lasting legacies.

But it may soon be undone — thankfully.

Sen. Ron Johnson, speaking to The Hill, said he hoped McCain’s replacement would be a “strong ally” in the fight to repeal the signature Barack Obama health care bill. And an unnamed senior Senate Republican aide said his side would indeed vote on a repeal once again, so long as the GOP retains majority in the House.

“McCain was personally conservative but ideologically inconsistent,” the aide told the Hill.

That’s an understatement, at least on Obamacare.

Once again, as Robb put it: “McCain ran on repealing Obamacare. He broke his promise.”

Let’s hope the senator who fills his shoes won’t be so — “inconsistent.”

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter, @ckchumley.

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