[Screwed up this weekend.  Got distracted buying a car at a busy dealership and didn’t get anything up yesterday.  My apologies.]

Buried in a Howard Kurz op-ed last Thursday was this bit from Senator John McCain (R, AZ).  Kurz described McCain’s…dismay…with Senator Ted Cruz’ (R, TX) speech against funding Obamacare, then quoted McCain:

[W]e fought as hard as we could in a fair and honest manner, and we lost.

One of the reasons was because we were in the minority, and in democracies, almost always the majority governs and passes legislation….

No, John, you haven’t lost until you surrender.  You, personally, didn’t lose when you were captured by the North Vietnamese and held prisoner all those years, all those years ago.  You fought the next battle—in prison, a years-long battle—and you fought the next battles, lots of them, in your subsequent political career.

McCain, and the Republican Party generally, need to remember that example from (personal) history and fight on.  The minority party lost a battle in 2010.  That’s no excuse for surrendering the struggle now.

There’s a difference between “almost always” and “always.”  There’s a difference between courage and meekly accepting points for a good, but losing, try.