John McCain was a paradox. There's no one like him left in Congress | Geoffrey Kabaservice

The senator held some deeply conservative views, but his principles and belief in bipartisanship made him unique

Senator John McCain, who died Saturday of brain cancer at age 81, was a paradox. By any reasonable political measure, he was a highly conservative legislator, who voted in line with the preferences of his Republican party almost all the time. He opposed abortion and gun control. He was a deficit hawk who wanted the federal government to stop funding a long list of popular programs, including the nation’s passenger railroad system and public television. He supported the death penalty and a constitutional amendment banning flag-burning, led the drive to pour billions of dollars into defense buildups, and advocated a hawkish and interventionist foreign policy. And yet, many movement conservatives considered him an enemy, while moderate Republicans and even many Democrats viewed him as an ally. Why?

For starters, McCain earned his “maverick” label by staking out positions on certain issues that conservatives deemed heretical. He was a chief sponsor of a campaign finance law that irritated many of the Republican party’s deepest-pocketed donors. He was one of the leading Republican advocates calling for government action to address climate change, despite some conservatives’ insistence that the whole concept of global warming was a hoax. In the face of growing rightwing xenophobia, he advocated a path toward citizenship for immigrants who had entered the country illegally. He cast the deciding vote last year against the Republican attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

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