July 29, 2011 03:15 AM UTC

McCain Just Says What Many Republicans Are Thinking

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• by: Colorado Pols

Our friends at “The Fix” have more on Sen. John McCain’s Senate Floor speech deriding the Tea Party and its Elected official followers:

Arizona Sen. John McCain’s floor speech on Wednesday denouncing the negotiating tactics of some tea party-aligned Members of Congress raises the question as to whether the famed maverick is back to his old tricks.

McCain derided the idea – pushed by some tea party-affiliated members like Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)- that raising the debt ceiling should be tied to adding a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, a proposal that lacks majority support in the Senate. (McCain supports the idea.)

He called such an argument “foolish” and bizarro”, adding that to portray the balanced budget amendment as a possibility amounted to “deceiving many of our constituents.” He also quoted extensively from a Wall Street Journal op-ed that compared tea partiers to “hobbits”.

The tea party responded in kind; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul deadpanned that he’d “rather be a hobbit than a troll” while 2010 Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle said that “it is the hobbits who are the heroes and save the land.” Um, ok.

You’ve got to love that last quote from Sharron Angle, one-time Tea Party darling but also example #1A for how the Tea Party is killing Republicans (it was her ridiculous U.S. Senate campaign in Nevada in 2010 that made it possible for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to escape what looked to be a losing re-election bid).