The anti-Rand Pauls, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, took to the Senate floor this morning to defend killing American citizens at presidential discretion. Graham is doing so live on C-SPAN2 right now, saying that everything you do is a danger to America no matter who or where you are, as long as the U.S. government has decided you have "joined al-Queda," whatever the hell that means. Earlier John McCain said, as Business Insider reported:
"Calm down, Senator," McCain said, in an admonition to Paul. "The U.S. government cannot randomly target U.S. citizens."
McCain argued that Paul's warning that the Obama could target would U.S. citizens in "cafes" on American soil, and his related "Jane Fonda" analogy, 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," he said. "I don't think what happened yesterday is helpful to the American people."
The Republican Party is at war, folks, and let's hope Rand Paul and his troops win.
UPDATE: Sen. McCain was apparently quoting a crummy Wall Street Journal op-ed in the portion quoted above about "libertarian kids."
Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine and author of Ron Paul’s Revolution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired (Broadside Books).