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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 Thursday that he’s worried about the Republican Party’s future and the infighting that is dividing it, calling efforts by conservatives to unseat incumbent Republican lawmakers “wrong.” The famously wry McCain, R-Ariz., said he regretted calling the Tea Party wing of the Republican Senate conference “wacko birds” during budget negotiations, saying he’s learned to “never get personal” in political disputes… “I do worry about the Republican Party,” he said at the Hero Summit hosted by The Daily Beast. “It’s the first time I have ever seen Republican senators running ads, raising money that is being used to...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator John McCain predicted on Tuesday a third political party will emerge in response to Americans' economic frustrations and said it might as well be called "the Fed-Up Party." The Republican Party's presidential nominee in 2008 raised the possibility of a third party about a year ago, but his comments on Tuesday suggest he has hardened his views as polls show Americans increasingly disillusioned with Washington politics. The 75-year-old McCain may now be the most prominent politician forecasting Americans will look to another party to compete with Democrats and Republicans. "Unless both parties change, then I think...

GILBERT - Arizona Sen. John McCain held a town hall in Gilbert this morning and the economy took center stage. The town hall was focused on the nations' economic troubles and McCain said the on-going financial problems would be much greater had Congress not passed a bill to keep the country from defaulting on its debt. McCain said he is very concerned with the recent S&P downgrade of the United States' credit rating and views it as a wake-up call to the nation. "It will cost more to borrow money and it is a very serious situation," McCain said. McCain...

Local tea party activists felt that Sen. John McCain had some explaining to do. As a result, McCain, R-Ariz., spent some of a town hall meeting at Gilbert Municipal Center on Monday defending his comments last week in the U.S. Senate, where he read from a Wall Street Journal editorial referring to "tea party hobbits." McCain said he quoted the editorial to make a point about some Republicans' insisting on a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution in exchange for agreeing to raise the nation's debt limit. "What apology is in order?" McCain responded when asked if he would apologize. "What...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two senators and former presidential candidates say Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the U.S. credit rating speaks to the need for more bipartisan compromise — but they also say the blame lay with the other party.

(snip) MCCAIN: ... just wants to spend money. Hello? He just wants to spend more money. You and I are -- remember when Ronald Reagan said the worst deal he ever made was when he sat down with the Democrats and said they would cut spending $3 and raise taxes for every $1. Guess what? They raised taxes and they didn’t cut spending. That’s why the Tea Partiers and others would – I’m not a Tea Partier -- but the fact is, we need a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We couldn’t get it through the Senate as the...

Former GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, who this week referred to Tea Party lawmakers as "hobbits," publicly criticized Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey Sunday during an unusual unscripted debate on the Senate floor. McCain, who appeared to be having a great 'ol time during a back and forth with Democrat Majority Whip Sen. Dick Durbin, referred to Toomey and those who share his views as "terrible." (snip) "...the terrible obstructionists on this side of the aisle, the terrible people, their flawed philosophical views about the future of America..."

So the debt limit debate has come to this: John McCain, who you may recall was the GOP’s 2008 standard bearer, is now openly accusing conservatives of actively misleading America with their completely unrealistic demands, which he labeled “deceiving” and “bizarro.” In a seminal moment in this debate, here’s some video of McCain on the Senate floor today, unleashing an angry tirade at conservatives who are still holding out for a balanced budget amendment as part of any compromise on the debt ceiling. McCain accused them of “deceiving” America into believing such a thing can pass the Senate:

Mr. McCain mocked Tea Party-allied Republicans in the House for believing — wrongly, he said — that President Obama and Democrats will get the blame for a default if Republicans refuse to increase the nation’s debt ceiling. By that flawed logic, “Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced budget amendment and reform entitlements and the Tea Party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth,” he said, quoting a Wall Street Journal editorial. “This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into G.O.P. nominees,” he jeered, referring to two losing Tea Party...

There is a dismaying symmetry about the debt-limit controversy. Today’s Left creates phony crises to rationalize action on its radically transformative program; today’s Right creates phony rationalizations to avoid addressing actual crises. Incrementally, yesterday’s radicalism becomes today’s norm. The Right talks a good game about small government, constitutional government. But that is all it is: talk. When it gets down to brass tacks, like now, with our nation sinking into a death spiral of unsustainable, incalculable debt, the Right's solution is to grow government while trusting that government will constrain government — at some future date, of course. And when...

Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) are working together to expand the U.S.' role in the Arab Spring, according to The Washington Post. Kerry and McCain traveled to Egypt last weekend with eight Fortune 500 executives to explore how the U.S. can expand economic investment in that country after the fall of Hosni Mubarak. They envision similar plans across the Middle East in the aftermath of the Middle East revolts that would be similar to the U.S.' “Marshall Plan,” in which the U.S. invested billions of dollars in war-torn European nations after World War II.

Two top senators on Tuesday introduced a resolution giving President Obama explicit authorization to continue aiding the NATO mission in Libya, seeking to strengthen the White House’s hand at a key moment in the brewing constitutional tug of war with Congress. Sen. John F. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, who is Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, who is the ranking GOP member on the Senate Armed Services Committee — and, coincidentally, the last two losing presidential nominees — are co-sponsoring the resolution, which would grant Mr. Obama “limited” authorization to continue using force. “This is not...

Republican Senator John McCain today ripped into the current crop of GOP candidates, accusing them of breaking with the party's traditions by preaching 'isolationism.' Mr McCain, the Republican candidate in the 2008 presidential elections, said if former President Ronald Reagan were still alive he would have been disappointed in last week's Republican presidential debate in which candidates voiced impatience with U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya. Mr McCain told ABC's This Week: 'He would be saying: "That's not the Republican Party of the 20th century, and now the 21st century. That is not the Republican Party that...

PHOENIX, June 19 (UPI) -- Illegal immigrants from Mexico are responsible for starting some of the huge wildfires in Arizona, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., alleges. At a Phoenix news conference, the right-wing senator claimed illegal immigrants light fires in the wilderness for warmth, to send signals and to distract border agents, CNN said. "There is substantial evidence that some of these fires have been caused by people who have crossed our border illegally," McCain said. "The answer to that part of the problem is to get a secure border." However, he offered no evidence to substantiate his claim.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday that a resolution he’s spent months crafting on Libya will likely call on the White House to increase its communication with Congress, an addition that could help pick up support for the stalled measure. Last week the Foreign Relations Committee postponed a mark up of McCain’s resolution, written in partnership with Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), fearing the measure would not get enough votes. “I think as the situation has evolved in Libya, and frankly the lack of consultation and reporting to Congress has gone on, then we will be working on more...

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Sen. Mark Begich is turning a deaf ear to Sarah Palin's demand that he make drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a condition for his vote to approve raising the nation's debt ceiling. "She's not really on my radar screen to take advice from," the Alaska Democrat told reporters Tuesday. "Let me put it this way. It's always interesting to read what she has to say," Begich said. But, he added, "Someone who quit Alaska is not someone I look for to get Alaska policy decisions on." In discussing the debt ceiling vote on "Fox News Sunday," Palin said:...

(snip) During the comments, talk turned briefly to whether McCain would support former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin - his running mate during the 2008 presidential election - in a bid for the White House in 2012. McCain said it is all hypothetical at this point, as Palin has not officially announced her intention to seek the Republican nomination. "I'm proud of Sarah Palin. I'm proud of the campaign that she ran and she invigorated our campaign," McCain said. "I think she will be a very formidable candidate if she decides to seek the nomination of the Republican Party." The New...

(snip) "I reminded them that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia reimbursed us after Operation Desert Storm," McCain says. "They said they'd be glad to discuss that.(snip) "They're very good people," he says. "Mainly well-educated, a number of women in the [Transitional National Council] -- very normal, dedicated people." (snip) McCain dismissed concerns that rebel forces include some veterans of al Qaeda. "I'm sure that there may be some element there, but I guarantee you that they didn't rise up because they wanted to be al Qaeda fighters," McCain says. "They rose up because they wanted to throw off the yoke of...