Free Republic

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) channeled his inner-maverick Friday during an appearance on Fox News Channel, repeatedly reminding the conservative network that the government shutdown was brought about by the quixotic effort to halt the Affordable Care Act. When anchor Martha MacCallum asked him about the White House's handling of the suspension of death benefits to military families, McCain said that while the administration deserves blame it was a GOP-induced shutdown that caused the problem in the first place.

Sen. John McCain said Wednesday that there was never a chance of defunding Obamacare, blaming politicians who said it was possible for the current government shutdown. “We started this on a fool’s errand, convincing so many millions of Americans and our supporters that we could defund Obamacare,” McCain (R-Ariz.) told Wolf Blitzer on CNN. “[That] obviously wouldn’t happen until we had 67 Republican senators to override a presidential veto.”[snip] “[It was] the people that convinced so many millions of Americans, tea partiers specifically we’re talking about, that there was some way to defund Obamacare. We can’t,” McCain said.

Starts at 7:09, ends 27:58 Cornyn claims that FreedomWorks does a disservice by encouraging "republican violence" i.e. by supporting and funding conservative challengers to moderate republicans. Yet Cornyn endorsed Arlen Specter and Charlie Crist and funded Lisa Murkowski over the republican nominee. He says "we need to win elections" Yet he supported or endorsed every moderate over every conservative when he was head of the NRSC.

Congressman Peter King has been one of the strongest Republican voices opposing Ted Cruz‘s fight against Obamacare, frequently calling him a “fraud.” On CNN Wednesday night, King continued hammering Cruz, telling Anderson Cooper that despite how much Cruz may view himself as a conservative “folk hero” the majority of the country is rallying behind, “those I’ve spoken to think he’s crazy.” King likened this to the Charge of the Light Brigade and said Cruz is a “kamikaze pilot,” ultimately finding his tactics to be destructive to the Republican party. He continued to call Cruz a fraud and a “medicine man...