The Skinny

La-La-La! McSally sticks fingers in ears, votes to extend White House coverup

Sen. Martha McSally has heard enough.
Sen. Martha McSally has heard enough.
U.s. Sen. Martha McSally just didn't want to hear any more.

Or so she tweeted last week, explaining that she had "heard enough" about President Donald Trump's Ukrainian shakedown. Voting to allow witnesses—even her pal, former Trump administration National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has penned a book in which he evidently revealed that Trump tried to drag him into the scheme to hold up desperately needed military aid until Ukrainian officials agreed to a bogus investigation into Joe Biden—would just take up too much time.

"A dangerous precedent will be set if we condone a rushed, partisan House impeachment with no due process that shuts down the Senate for weeks or months to do the House's work," McSally tweeted.

It's hardly surprising that McSally happily joined her GOP colleagues in sweeping Trump's scandal under the rug. (By the time you read this, she will likely have voted to acquit Trump of any wrongdoing.) She has been a loyal handmaiden to His Royal Majesty ever since she realized she had to fall in line or end up a political casualty like Jeff Flake.

Just a few days before she announced she wasn't interested in getting to the bottom of the Ukraine scandal, McSally took to the pages of the Arizona Republic to defend her image-defining dismissal of a CNN reporter as a "liberal hack" when he asked her if she wanted to hear from witnesses in the impeachment trial.

The "hack" thing was obviously a rehearsed line: McSally even had one of her staffers recording the incident so she could tweet it out and she was hawking T-shirts to raise campaign funds by the end of the day.

McSally spent a lot of her ink in the Republic piece complaining that the liberal media is biased against her while boasting that she's the real straight talker.

"As a U.S. senator for Arizona, it is my responsibility to faithfully represent the people of Arizona and tell them the truth," she wrote. "The latter part of that duty is all too often lost in today's political environment. Politicians often sugarcoat things, tell you what you want to hear and otherwise play games with language that obscures the truth in our politics. It's a runaway train of people who never seem to say what they mean or what's really going on.

"And that's when I get off the train," McSally continued. "I am not a career politician. I don't play that game because it does a disservice to the people of Arizona."

Except McSally does play that game. She has dodged and weaved when it comes to basic questions about her positions since she first stepped foot the campaign trail. On the very same day that McSally vowed to "to tell you the truth. To explain my votes. And to call 'em like I see 'em," McSally dodged another tough question about whether she wanted to see Bolton testify. Political reporter Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, recognizing that Bolton was a big supporter of McSally and McSally was a big supporter of Bolton, reached out to McSally's office. McSally "declined to say whether she wanted to hear from Bolton," according to the Republic story.

But McSally's biggest dodge has been avoiding any comment on the Ukrainian scandal itself. Whenever she has commented on the impeachment, she has focused her ire on Democrats for their investigation. That's like a juror in a mafia trial complaining that prosecutors are harassing these poor Italians.

Martha: Sidestepping tough questions isn't calling it like you see it. It's just being, well, a Trump hack.

Presidential Primary Alert!

If you want to vote for a Democratic hopeful in Arizona's primary, you need to be a Democrat

If you're hoping to vote in Arizona's presidential primary, you'll need to be a registered Democrat. That's unlike the Arizona's other primary elections, where Independents have the option of selecting a Democratic or Republican ballot. (Republicans went ahead and canceled their participation in the primary because King Trump need not brook any challenges from the likes of William Weld or Joe Walsh.) 

You have until Feb. 18 to register for the March 17 primary.

By the way, if you're looking to sort through the presidential hopefuls, Project Vote Smart remains an excellent resource for fact-based breakdowns on where the candidates stand.

Project Vote Smart sends out extensive questionnaires to all the presidential candidates (as well as candidates for federal and state office), but many of them refuse to fill it out because they don't want the info used against them in political attack ads. For the record, the only major Democratic candidate still in the race who responded to the questionnaire is Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

Still, even without the candidates' participation, Team Vote Smart has assembled a whole bunch of positions that the candidates have taken in the past. Compare and contrast them at justfacts.votesmart.org.