U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., delivers her signatures to Arizona Director of Elections Eric Spencer at the Arizona Secretary of State’s office Tuesday, May 29, 2018 at the Capitol in Phoenix. Sinema is officially running as a Democrat for U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Jeff Flake. Women running for office have crossed another threshold with a record number of candidates for the U.S. Senate. Actually winning those seats and changing the face of the chamber are a different matter. Many of the women jumping into Senate races face uphill campaigns. (AP Photo/Matt York)
Politico is concerned about “party unity,” which is an odd thing for a supposedly unbiased news source to be worried about. Of course, the unity they are concerned with involves the Democrat party, which is currently rushing to try to impeach President Trump.
Apparently, Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema isn’t meeting their expectations and so that meant a soft-spoken, but unarguably chiding piece needed to be commissioned. Enter Burgess Everett to bring home the goods.
Sen. Sinema rarely goes to party lunches and skipped votes to run the Ironman. She endorsed a primary challenger against her own colleague and hobnobs with Republicans on the Senate floor. And the Dem debates? No, she doesn’t watch: “I prefer happiness” https://t.co/jvw4pXHYDQ
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) October 29, 2019
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is threatening party unity at a crucial moment. She doesn’t care.
Some of the excerpts from the article really show how insane the media has gone. Now, being not insane is something to be questioned.
Yet Sinema is also setting herself up to be a pivotal vote the next time the Democrats are in power. And her radical breed of centrism could be a headache for the party.
Take the liberal drive to bust down age-old Senate rules in order to pass “Medicare for All” or a “Green New Deal.” Sinema not only opposes getting rid of the 60-vote filibuster threshold for legislation, she wants to restore the supermajority requirement for presidential nominees that has been weakened by both parties.
How shocking that she’d want to restore basic minority protections if given the chance? Scandalous even.
Party leaders’ whip counts? Not her problem. Using her platform as senator to regularly promote her views to a national audience? Not interested. Skipping caucus lunches almost everyone else attends? She’ll be there when it matters for Arizona.
And missing votes on the EPA chief for an Ironman race?
“Ironman’s pretty badass. It’s awesome,” she responded when asked if she got any criticism for skipping town for New Zealand just two months into her term.
Less awesome, in her view, is the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. And with her party fixated on beating both McSally and Trump in Arizona, Sinema’s endorsement or even guidance for candidates about how to win there could be key.
But that’s not something she’s interested in, either. She even said it’s “premature” to commit to supporting her own party’s nominee at this point and indicated it could be months before she tunes into a debate.
A politician who thinks for themselves is oddly refreshing, even if she’s a Democrat. Reportedly, Sinema and Ted Cruz are fairly close, working together on the Commerce Committee. She’s said to spend as much time with Republicans as Democrats. Of course, her voting record, while decidedly more conservative than every other Democrat (including voting for several Trump appointments), is still fairly liberal. Yet, the tact of shunning Washington elitism and seemingly only caring about things that affect her constituents is a lot closer to the original intent of the Senate than the nationalized monstrosity it’s become.
As you read the piece, you can tell the Politico writer doesn’t want to overstep with his criticism, but he clearly doesn’t approve of the way she operates. He frets over the fact that she doesn’t get involved in the whipping process and is refusing to even pledge support to the future Democratic nominee. There’s a very real possibility that if it’s Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, Sinema could simply sit on the sidelines. That’s the kind of blue dog nature that was thought to be extinct in D.C.
Politico really doesn’t like that though. Sinema, for all her leans toward moderation, is still a liberal Democrat. That’s not enough these days. You’ve got to set your hair on fire and run around screaming about impeachment to really be part of the club. You also can’t be liked by Republicans at all.
Sinema has long cultivated a bipartisan posture. But her support for Donald Trump nominees like Attorney General William Barr and her lack of zeal for impeachment are part of a political profile drawing blowback from progressives and cheers from the GOP.
Everett’s entire article reads like a textbook example of what’s wrong with Washington. The inability for any nuance to exist along with the woke, socialism or bust mindset of our media elites is exactly why Donald Trump got elected in the first place. People were and are sick of this crap. Politico is happy to perpetuate it though.
At the end of the day, I wouldn’t vote for Sinema and I recognize she supports things I simply can’t get behind, but I can at least respect that she’s taken a different path. Our politics would be a lot more sane if others in her party would follow her lead.
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