If Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s loooooooooong filibuster over drones exposed a partisan rift, it also highlighted a rift within the Republican Party — one that 2016 Presidential nomnination hopefuls will have to grapple with. And a rift it most assuredly is:
U.S. Sen. John McCain blasted fellow Republican Rand Paul on the Senate floor this morning for his 13-hour filibuster to block John Brennan’s confirmation as CIA Director.
“Calm down, Senator,” McCain said, in an apostrophe to Paul. “The U.S. government cannot randomly target U.S. citizens.”
In his filibuster Wednesday, Paul criticized the White House over its drone policies, and for refusing to rule out military strikes against U.S. citizens on American soil.McCain, a staunch foreign policy hawk, said Thursday that Paul’s warnings that the U.S. could target “Jane Fonda” or “people in cafes” bring the debate into the “realm of the ridiculous.”
“If Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids,” McCain said, adding: “I don’t think what happened yesterday is helpful to the American people.”
McCain’s political best bud Sen. Lindsay Graham also dissed the filibuster and those Senators who helped Paul. Even so, Paul drew statements of support from many in the blogosphere and on Facebook — including those who might not always agree with him. Some also praised the fact he used the good, old fashioned talking filibuster. And it was a smart move: he got lots of ink and air time and cemented his image as a libertarian-type who will follow in his famous Dad’s footsteps as a rallying point for libertarians unhappy with some of the positions of the establishment GOP and some in the Tea Party movement.
But it highlights how the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination sweepstakes promises to be a lively, potentially divisive and potentially politically bloody one. The net result of the filibuster? As the Republican Party struggles (seemingly fruitlessly) to reband itself, Rand Paul has taken a big, long, verbal step at branding himself.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.