Martha McSally was not a perfect Republican candidate for Senate, and her inability to win an election against an utterly revolting and gaffe-prone leftist such as Kyrsten Sinema in a place like Arizona (which, at least on paper, doesn't permit ballot harvesting) doesn't speak all that well for her.

But the choice of McSally to fill the unfinished Senate term of Sen. John McCain by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey was sweet news indeed.

That's because the loud opposition to her from the McCain family was so very bad, and this appointment stands as a rebuke to them.  Better still, now that McSally's got the job over their objections, she owes them nothing.

Here was the Washington Examiner story four days ago:

Meghan McCain's husband said that Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., would be an "unwise choice" for Arizona senator.

"McSally strikes me as an unwise choice for a number of reasons," Ben Domenech tweeted.  "She's like an NFL team that plays down to its opponents' level – and she'll be tasked with running for re-election immediately."

He made a tweet, and his wife, McCain's daughter Meghan, retweeted it.  Then McSally went to try to make nice with the dragon-lady matron of the bunch, Cindy McCain, but things didn't seem to get any better, though officially they say so, minus their endorsement, of course.  The whole thing was over something embarrassingly small and petty, too: McSally's "crime" in their eyes was that she didn't bring McCain's name up in a speech on some defense authorization bill.  Whoa!  That was enough to turn this touchy bunch entirely against the woman, who had actually been a friend of McCain's, and then they got loud about it.

The McCains overreached.  They overplayed their hand.  They horned in where they had no business.  And they got smacked down.

Ducey's appointment of her stands as a great rebuke to these obnoxious and entitled people, who, frankly, have no right at all to say who they think should finish his term.  Had Ducey been a Democrat, the job would have been filled by a Democrat – and knowing the McCains, they probably would have actually liked that.  Instead, Arizona got a normal Republican, who made the mistake of offending them by a tiny omission, and too bad if they don't like it.

It's a logical enough choice from a fairness perspective, too; never mind their ruffled feathers.  Ducey appointed the second runner-up who got the second-highest number of votes to the job, which is kind of like how national beauty pageants do it, placing their first national titleholder in competition for Miss Universe, the runner-up in competition for Miss World, and the third-place finisher in competition for Miss Earth or other contests.  Second runner-up also takes the crown if the titleholder isn't available for the job, and it seems to be perfectly understandable in politics to go on that sequence as well.  Yet to the McCains, fairness was not as important as their delicate feelings.

With the McCains rendered irrelevant now, the whole thing gives McSally a chance to prove herself to voters, for about a year or two, until the special election for the actual remainder of the term in 2020, and then the 2022 regular election.  That's going to take a lot of fundraising, and McSally already has that part of her operation in place, so one can see the practicality of the whole thing.

The rest of us can root for McSally if for nothing else than that she has made the McCains mad and now she's got the Senate seat.