The Maricopa County Republican Party in Arizona formally censured Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

by Matthew Boyle

Saturday evening by an overwhelming 1150-351 vote, Breitbart News has learned.  

Maricopa County is Arizona's most populous county and includes Phoenix within its borders. The official GOP body's rebuke undermines McCain's reelection chances should he decide to run for the Senate again in 2016. 

“As leaders in the Republican Party, we are obligated to fully support our Party, platform, and its candidates,” the formal censure resolution reads. “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 Senator McCain would return to our Party’s values on his own. That has not happened.”
The resolution continues by stating, with “sadness and humility,” the Republicans in the county “rise and declare” that McCain “has amassed a long and terrible record of drafting, co- sponsoring and voting for legislation best associated with liberal Democrats, such as Amnesty, funding for ObamaCare, the debt ceiling, assaults on the Constitution and 2nd amendment, and has continued to support liberal nominees.”
That voting record from McCain, they say, “has been disastrous and harmful to Arizona and the United States.”

McCain was elected, the Republicans say in the censure resolution, by campaigning “as a conservative” and making promises during his various reelection campaigns “such as the needed and welcomed promise to secure our borders and finish the border fence, only to quickly flip-flop on those promises.”
The Republicans say that McCain “has abandoned our core values and has been eerily silent against Liberals, yet publicly reprimands Conservatives in his own Party.” Therefore, the Maricopa County GOP leadership “censures Senator McCain for his continued disservice to our State and Nation.”
The censure states that formally, “until he consistently champions our Party’s Platform and values, we, the Republican leadership in Arizona will no longer support, campaign for or endorse John McCain as our U.S. Senator.”
Maricopa County joins Apache County and Mohave County in voting to formally censure McCain via similar resolutions. There are 15 counties total in Arizona, which means that at this point, 20 percent of Arizona’s county GOP bodies have officially censured McCain—three years out from his potential reelection campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2016.
McCain has not made a final decision yet on whether or not he will run for re-election.