Meghan McCain, the daughter of Republican Senator John McCain, said in an interview with ABC and Yahoo News that her father “was ‘frustrated’ and ‘depressed’ by the Tea Party.” Meghan described the Tea Party as the ‘hyper-conservative wing” of the Republican Party.

John McCain’s daughter went on to say:

“He is so depressed. He is so downtrodden. The way he’s talking about it, how he’s never seen it this bad in his 30-plus years in office.” She then complained about her father having to run “another dirty tea party election,” saying that the prospect of a primary challenge could encourage her father to drop out.

Hey Meghan, we’re also frustrated and depressed that your father has turned into a constitutional obstructionist. He should remember that a lot of conservatives voted for him in 2008 even though he was not the conservative they were hoping for. He often sent mixed signals on important issues.

There was a lot in his voting record that they could agree with, but they saw a trend toward compromise in naively working with the Democrats believing there would be political reciprocity. Democrats view compromise as weakness.

John McCain should returned the favor for all the years that conservatives stood by him and elected him by large margins and support fellow-conservatives who are trying to save the GOP and the country.

Your father should have gotten in line behind their efforts. Instead, he attacked Senators Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz by calling them “wacko birds.”

As John McCain has spent more time in the Senate, he’s often gotten a reputation for undermining the conservative wing of the party. For example, in 2005 his involvement in the infamous “Gang of 14” on filibustering of judicial nominees, Mark Levin wrote about this in an article for Human Events titled “Call Them the Sellout Seven”:

“On the eve of the day when the unconstitutional filibustering of judicial nominees was going to be voted down by the Republican majority in the Senate — returning the body to the majoritarian rule on judicial nominations that had stood for more than 214 years — seven so-called ‘moderate’ Republicans sabotaged their 48 Senate colleagues, the Senate leadership and the President. For weeks, they had huddled in secret with seven Democrats looking for a deal to avoid the coming showdown. . . . John McCain of Arizona, their leader, has built his career on undermining his party.”

It’s this undermining of conservative principles and actions that has gotten so many conservatives riled up.

Describing the Tea Party as the “hyper-conservative wing” is a telling indicator of how far the GOP has fallen from the days of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Early in his political career, John McCain, along with Reagan, would have been described as a hyper-conservative.”

Those who put their lives on the line by signing the Declaration of Independence were thought of as “hyper.” The same could be said of those who participated in the drafting of the United States Constitution, the very document that these “hyper-conservatives” want to get back to.

It’s time for John McCain to do the right thing and step aside.