By SAHIL KAPUR
Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) epic 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan for CIA director finally came to an amicable resolution Thursday, but not before sparking a battle within the Republican Party hierarchy — the latest in a series of internal struggles the party has faced since the election.
On Paul’s side is the right-wing apparatus and their darlings in Congress — notably Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), who joined the filibuster. They were delighted by Paul’s highly public confrontation with the White House and cheered him on until the very end.
One the other side are the GOP neoconservatives, led by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who are WashingtonÂ’s chief guardians of broad executive power when it comes to dealing with the countryÂ’s enemies.
They were furious with PaulÂ’s attacks on President ObamaÂ’s drone policy.
“To somehow allege or infer that the President of the United States is going to kill somebody like Jane Fonda, or somebody who disagrees with the policies, is a stretch of imagination which is, frankly, ridiculous,” McCain said Thursday morning on the Senate floor.
He read from a scathing Wall Street Journal editorial declaring that “if Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms. He needs to know what he’s talking about.”
That angered the wealthy conservative activist group FreedomWorks, which called McCain’s remarks “rude and out of line,” and slammed him for “schmoozing with President Obama over dinner” while Paul was mounting his “courageous filibuster.”
