McCain Vs The Wacko Birds

McCain seems pretty bitter. Just 13 years younger than the recently departed Frank Lautenberg, McCain is fighting with everyone these days. Determined to start one more war before he dies, he's especially bitter that Republicans he and Lindsey Graham have dubbed "the wacko birds" are blocking his attempts to involve the U.S. in a war with Iran via Syria. Yesterday on CBS he expressed his displeasure that Darrell Issa, himself a serial car thief and arsonist-for-pay, called White House Press Secretary Jay Carney a "paid liar," something most right-wing groups are applauding.

But it's been with the libertarian-leaning "wacko birds" like Rand Paul and Justin Amash, that McCain has been especially truculent, stomping around the Senate floor denigrating not just Paul but also the new brand of right-wing extremists who are taking over the GOP, especially Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX). And right-wing propaganda outfits are fuming.

The debate was over, but John McCain wasn’t done. After he threw down with a trio of younger Republican colleagues he has dubbed the “wacko birds,” McCain proceeded to walk around the Senate floor, ranting about the interchange to individual senators.

McCain was incensed that Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee have been blocking Democratic majority leader Harry Reid from appointing Senate members to a conference committee for the budget resolution. During the debate, McCain “basically accused Lee of being an idiot,” as one aide put it. Lee was either being “directly misleading or has no knowledge of how the budget conference works,” McCain said, adding, “I don’t know which one it is, and I don’t know which one is worse.”

Democrats rushed to the floor to join what they obviously saw as a fun chance to pile on. McCain asked Senator Patty Murray questions designed to make Lee look ridiculous, which she answered with glee. McCain even threw Senator Marco Rubio-- his fellow Gang of Eight member on immigration-- under the bus when Rubio sided with Lee. “One has to then question what the knowledge of those who are advocating this is about fundamental procedures,” he said in response to Rubio.

...“There’s never been a saloon fight that he didn’t enjoy, even if he didn’t need to participate. I think that brings great joy to him,” says longtime McCain confidant John Weaver.

Weaver notes that McCain’s core policy disputes with the wacko birds are over foreign policy and that their feud really began with Paul’s filibuster over President Barack Obama’s drone policies. McCain panned the filibuster as a “disservice to a lot of Americans.”

“I know that he and other senators-- and I’ve talked to a number of senators-- are concerned about a growing isolationist wing within our caucus in the House and the Senate and in our party in general, which gets away from roots that we have in our party,” Weaver says.

“If you talk to young Republicans or Republicans who are newly elected to office, they overwhelmingly care about civil liberties to a much higher degree than Republicans of a past generation, and I think that’s a big source of friction within the party,” says Representative Justin Amash of Michigan.

In the original Huffington Post interview in which he introduced the term “wacko birds,” McCain listed Amash, Cruz, and Paul as prime examples. He later apologized, but the targets of his ire were delighted. Amash registered WackoBird.com and posted a petition against McCain. WackoBirds.com, plural, is real estate owned by the Senate Conservatives Fund, which asks users to sign a petition to become a “proud wacko bird.” Representative Thomas Massie, another libertarian-leaning Republican who is close with Paul, his fellow Kentuckian, says, “I’m somewhat jealous I didn’t get added to the list.”

Massie describes the feud between McCain and the wacko birds as the same one that existed between former senator Jim DeMint and the GOP establishment before DeMint decamped for the Heritage Foundation. “I see this as a continuation of that battle, except the numbers are more in our favor now, even though Senator DeMint went to Heritage,” Massie says. “I see Rand as carrying the torch that DeMint lit.”

But there’s something else to the fight beyond policy disagreements. “Some of it comes down to style differences. Perhaps it’s a maverick seeing another maverick-- you know, generationally,” Weaver says, referring to Cruz. “I don’t know. I think most of it is policy driven.”

“McCain is one of the few senators who relishes the battle and isn’t afraid of a fight. The same could probably be said of Cruz, so we’re seeing some fireworks on the floor,” a McCain aide says, while dismissing as “nonsense” the notion that Cruz is a fellow maverick.

...[T]he overall fight between McCain and the wacko birds couldn’t be more important to the direction of the GOP. Paul has been quietly convening lawmakers at a townhouse owned by the Senate Conservatives Fund, trying to form a bicameral coalition of conservatives on budget issues. Massie and Representatives Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, along with roughly a dozen House members, were at one of the meetings a  couple of weeks back that was led by Paul.

Given that Paul, Rubio, and Cruz may run for president in 2016, the more restrained or isolationist (depending on your point of view) foreign-policy thinking of the wacko birds will no doubt come under serious scrutiny. One matter that promises to stir the foreign-policy debate is the Obama administration’s zealous seizure of reporters’ phone records, which has alarmed even some strong advocates of executive power. And the debacle of Syria looms larger and larger.

For now, if the conservative grass roots seem to be falling in line behind the wacko birds, even on an issue that might not matter a whole lot, such as the budget-conferees debate, it’s probably because they’ve lost faith with the John McCains of the world.