Senator John McCain, now in the twilight of his career, delivered a speech Tuesday on the Senate floor so fraught with drama that it felt like it was out of a movie. Here was a legendary figure, a war hero and a former presidential candidate now stricken with an aggressive cancer who flew, at real risk to his health, across the country to deliver a message to his colleagues about how Washington had lost its way. Bipartisan comity had given way to win-at-all-costs partisanship, he warned. Nor did McCain spare his own party. He lamented that Republican leadership had run roughshod over norms in order to ram through a flawed healthcare reform bill—“a shell of a bill,” as he called it.

“We’re getting nothing done,” the Arizona senator complained. “All we’ve really done this year is confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Our healthcare insurance system is a mess. We all know it, those who support Obamacare and those who oppose it. Something has to be done. We Republicans have looked for a way to end it and replace it with something else without paying a terrible political price. We haven’t found it yet, and I’m not sure we will.... We’ve tried to do this by coming up with a proposal behind closed doors in consultation with the administration, then springing it on skeptical members, trying to convince them it’s better than nothing, asking us to swallow our doubts and force it past a unified opposition.” He concluded, “I don’t think that is going to work in the end. And it probably shouldn’t.”

If this were a movie, there would be only one logical ending. Bucking his own party, putting country above politics, the weathered old maverick would cast the deciding “no” vote and stop the flawed bill in its tracks—likely killing the Republican health care effort altogether. But McCain had already cast a critical “yes” vote to open debate on repealing Obamacare. “I voted for the motion to proceed to allow debate to continue and amendments to be offered,” he said. “I will not vote for the bill as it is today.” Hours later, he did precisely the opposite, voting in favor of the Better Care Reconciliation Act, which nonetheless failed.

This movie ended with the film reel unspooling all over the floor.

It’s hardly news that McCain’s soaring speeches are belied by his own actions. Still, the yawning gap between McCain’s votes and his criticism of the GOP health care effort is a microcosm of the core problem: The Republican Party is so intellectually bankrupt that they are pushing ahead with a plan that they themselves know is terrible, merely so they can put a point on the scoreboard. This did not happen overnight, and it’s showing no signs of abating. Rather, it’s only getting worse under Trump, and there’s no telling what damage they will do together before voters get wise to it.

