Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said she does not support the Arizona GOP’s impending vote to censure Cindy McCain, the wife of late Sen. John McCain, for supporting President-elect Joe Biden.
McDaniel, who was recently reelected to a third term, urged the Arizona Republican Party to “not entertain” censuring McCain, approximately two weeks before the vote is set to take place on Jan. 23, according to the Associated Press.
Recommended Stories
“Obviously we are upset that a prominent Republican would support Joe Biden whose beliefs are the opposite of what our party stands for, but the language in this resolution is abhorrent,” McDaniel said in a statement to the Washington Post. “My hope is that the Arizona Republican Party will not entertain it. This does nothing to grow our party or put us in a better position to win in 2022.”
A draft resolution, considered over the weekend by the Maricopa County Republican Committee but did not move forward, referred to McCain as a “troubled individual” who has “a past riddled with drug abuse and illegalities associated with such behavior.” The resolution also criticized McCain for her support of “leftist causes such as gay marriage, growth of the administrative state, and others that run counter to Republican values,” according to journalist Yashar Ali.
McCain said she was a “proud lifelong Republican and will continue to support candidates who put country over party and stand for the rule of law.”
The text of the amended resolution, which led to some confusion about whether it passed, also condemned McCain for criticizing President Trump and called the president’s attacks on her late husband “truthful” because he “has become known for serious wrongdoing during his military service, and his service as a US Senator,” thus they claim that her criticisms of the president are “unjustified.”
The McCain-Trump feud predates the president’s time in office.
The president famously said John McCain, who spent years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was not a “war hero,” adding that he likes “people that weren’t captured.” In 2019, Cindy McCain, who endorsed Biden, said Trump’s presidency had changed the Republican Party, and it is no longer the “party that my husband and I belonged to.”
