Meghan McCain is a Never Trump Republican in the truest sense of the term. She’s long despised President Trump, his attacks on the late Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain, and his protectionist politics, but she’s still as much a conservative as her late father. She’s both an heir to the legacy of a Republican Party that prioritizes peace through strength abroad and limited government at home and socially progressive, a Republican who’s as pro-life and pro-gun as she is pro-gay and pro-woman.
In short, she’s the ideal talking head for liberals who want to hear a conservative perspective, but without the lies and crassness bordering on bigotry that has subsumed much of the Trump base.
I mention all of this to clarify why the Left cannot hide its malice for McCain — not because she’s the wrong kind of Never Trump Republican, but because they don’t want to hear from a Republican at all.
To be abundantly clear, not all or even most of those left-of-center wish to shut down discourse in the way the virulent dregs of the Left do. But you wouldn’t know it if you read the voices platformed by the media.
The latest entry in the smear campaign orchestrated against McCain comes from Shamira Ibrahim, a “culture writer” and “reporter” published at the New York Times. Ibrahim lambastes McCain— “the privileged product of conservative nepotism, capitalism and the American military-industrial complex” — for crimes such as “using her platform to push back against assault weapons bans” and “accusing her co-hosts of supporting infanticide.” (In the segment in question, McCain challenges co-host Sunny Hostin for refusing to support Republican Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse’s bill to protect babies born alive during a botched abortion.)
Ultimately, Ibrahim takes McCain to task for the sin of … well, being routinely berated at the bottom of progressive pile ons, which she claims “reinforces her base with a narrative of the long-suffering victim of censorship.”
“Every combative segment is immediately countered by a claim that it’s all just a harmless debate among friends, making the ostensibly organic on-air confrontations feel all the more performative, no matter how genuine the sentiment,” Ibrahim writes. “This ‘agree to disagree’ stance is frustrating, and lies in stark contrast with the current political moment, when many are skeptical of the idea of civil discourse and who it is meant to benefit.”
Right there, Ibrahim exposes the lie to the Left’s ire toward McCain. They don’t want to hear from any conservative, ever, no matter how socially libertarian or anti-Trump she is. They are totalitarians who cannot stand the idea that anyone out there disagrees with them — especially people who fail to fit the media mold of the straight-white-male conservative, redneck strawman.
To her credit, Ibrahim confessed on Twitter that her real beef with McCain is just a beef with conservatives’ existence.
Well I’m not a NYTimes employee to be clear….but….yes????? pic.twitter.com/wIW2Z13x9M
— Comorienne ?? (@_ShamGod) January 16, 2020
The View, a notorious cesspool of abuse and bullying media leaks, would suffer badly if it ever lost McCain. Without her, they wouldn’t just lose any and all ideological diversity at their desk, but also their single best interviewer. Only McCain had the moral clarity to corner since-ousted Women’s March co-President Tamika Mallory and challenge her anti-Semitism. Only McCain had the stones to challenge Pamela Anderson’s devotion to Julian Assange, a Putin-worshipping cyberterrorist. Only McCain had the chutzpah to make Michael Bloomberg answer for the Democratic Party’s failure to condemn anti-Semitism. Only McCain had the journalistic chops to make Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren finally concede that yes, Qassem Soleimani was indeed a terrorist.
As for illiberal leftists such as Ibrahim, when they want McCain replaced by Ana Navarro, it’s because they don’t want to hear any conservative voice. They just want someone to blindly bash Trump without offering a modicum of conservative commentary.
