BY LINDA BENTLEY | JANUARY 15, 2014
Maricopa County Republican Committee censures McCain
MCRC calls for repeal of the 17th Amendment
PHOENIX – Joining Apache and Navajo County Republican Committees, Maricopa County Republican Committee (MCRC), the state’s largest Republican group, voted 1,150 – 351 to pass a resolution censuring Sen. John McCain during its annual mandatory meeting on Saturday, Jan. 11.
Neither McCain nor U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake was present.
The resolution, titled, “Sen. John McCain censured by Arizona’s Republican leadership,” began, “As leaders in the Republican Party, we are obligated to fully support our party platform, and its candidates. Only in times of great crisis or betrayal is it necessary to publicly censure our leaders. Today we are faced with both. For too long we have waited, hoping Sen. John McCain would return to our party’s values on his own. This has not happened …”
The resolution highlights McCain’s “long and terrible record of drafting, cosponsoring and voting for legislation best associated with liberal Democrats,” including amnesty, funding for ObamaCare, the debt ceiling, liberal nominees and assaults on the Constitution and Second Amendment.
The resolution calls McCain’s record disastrous and harmful to Arizona and the United States, while pointing out he campaigned as a conservative and made promises during his reelection campaign, such as promising to secure our borders and finish the border fence, but has since flip-flopped on those promises.
While stating McCain has abandoned the party’s values and has been “eerily silent” against liberals, the MCRC points out he has instead publicly reprimanded conservatives in his own party.
The resolution censures McCain for his “continued disservice to our state and nation” and states “until he consistently champions our party’s platform, we the Republican leadership in Arizona will no longer support, campaign for or endorse John McCain as our U.S. Senator.”
A resolution submitted by former Senate President Russell Pearce, currently Arizona GOP First Vice Chairman, calling for repeal of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution also passed by a vote of 1,169 – 328.
Until the 17th Amendment was passed by Congress in 1912 and ratified by three-fourths of the states in 1913, U.S. Senators were elected by state legislatures. It also provided for governors to make temporary appointments for vacancies until an election could be held.
Since the 17th Amendment altered the way senators are elected, critics claim the states have lost whatever representation they had in the federal government and provided a means for an overextension of federal power along with the rise of special interest groups to take the place of what once came through state legislatures.
The power of governors to appoint temporary replacements to fill vacant senate seats has also been a bone of contention, in terms of how the provision is interpreted and whether it should be permitted at all, and has bolstered critics’ desire to repeal the 17th Amendment altogether.
Another resolution submitted by Pearce calling for closing primary elections passed by a vote of 1,290 – 209.
The resolution states, “[W]e have political parties for a reason” and they must “preserve the integrity of elections at all costs.”
Because members of a political party have a platform they stand for, the open primary system allows those who do not subscribe to those principles to vote in that party’s primary.
The resolution says the open primary system gives us a “false choice” of a candidate not supporting the party’s platform or not the “True” Republican choice.
It calls the open primary system unfair and one that is designed to allow non-Republicans to hurt the nomination choice of the registered party candidate.
Stating it is “extremely unfair” to allow the practice to continue, the resolution calls on the MCRC to encourage the party’s leadership “to immediately take all actions needed to close our primary nomination/election to Republicans only.”
Pearce’s “Resolution Against Amnesty,” to see to it the MCRC demand the Congress of the United States to strongly oppose S744 or any legislation supporting amnesty or the granting of lawful status to any person that has entered or remained in the country illegally, passed by a vote of 1,249 – 284.
His “Resolution Supporting United States History Education,” urging the Arizona Board of Regents, and all officials responsible for education curriculum, “review all public college and university curricula and require basic U.S. history and the real history of our Founding Fathers and the making of America, including our founding principles, the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, Constitution and important historical speeches during the Constitutional Convention,” passed by a vote of 1,290 – 209.
The MCRC passed numerous other resolutions, including one “In support of U.S. Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and those that stand with them and shaming all of those Republicans in Congress that voted with Obama Democrats to undermine the American People with unconstitutional and unsustainable Obamacare and more debt,” by a vote of 1,298 – 224.
