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to say for the country, only nasty words to spew about the people running it or hoping to. john mccain, who served the country so admirably, has become an angry fellow from dawn until dusk taking an occasional break to remember who he is and saying enough of this when his new allies get out of hand. when ted cruz starts attacking the loyalty to america of one of mccain's fellow vietnam vets, a combat vet at that. the viciousness is something we haven't seen before because of the combination of mccarthyism and this weird unconnectedness, attacking chuck hagel, for example, because no one will give us info or anyone info about the benghazi situation even though hagel wasn't even in the government when benghazi happened. sick stuff. and it seems to be growing in inverse proportion to obama's popularity. the better he looks, the worse these characters, inhofe, cruz, mccain, and lindsey graham, are determined to look. did you notice the smile on john boehner's face sitting up there behind the president during the state of the union? if you did, you're imagining things. so afraid of the hard
for cloture and move on to his nomination. >> that's right. senators john mccain and lindsey graham will vote to end debate on the confirmation of chuck hagel, eventually, but today, they just didn't feel like it. they towed the party line and voted to block hagel's nomination. the procedural vote failed 40-58 with one senator voting present and one senator not voting. 54 democrats voted in favor as did four republicans. no cabinet member nominated for a national security post has ever been filibustered. only two cabinet secretary nominees in history have been filibustered. both eventually cleared their cloture votes 85-8. and both were eventually easily confirmed. today, senate majority leader harry reid knew he did not have the votes to clear the republican procedural hurdle, but scheduled a vote anyway to demonstrate this. >> republicans have made an unfortunate choice to ratchet up the level of destruction here in washington. there's nothing going to change in the next ten days about the qualifications of chuck hagel. i guess to be able to run for the senate as a republican in most places
in washington, d.c. that can do sunday shows? john mccain would be good. >> yeah, he's 234not going to v for him. at the earliest, it won't happen until lawmakers return to washington next week after a ten-day recess. senator john mccain, one of hagel's most outspoken critics, pushed back against suggestions that his opposition was meant to settle old scores. >> is it payback time for chuck hagel? that's what this process has amounted to? >> of course not. 99% of it is to do with the positions that senator hagel has taken. the positions he's taken on various issues has frankly been not only out of the mainstream but far to the left. we will have a vote when we get back, and i'm confident that senator hagel will probably have the votes necessary to be confirmed as the secretary of defense. we have an obligation of advice and consent. i don't intend to give those up when other senators continue to have reasonable questions. i mean reasonable. >> but you're not a yes vote for your old friend? >> no, i don't believe he's qualified, but i don't believe that we should hold up his nomination any furthe
's the new organization. it's if latest example, republicans turning on each other. john mccain tried to humiliate nominee chuck hagel. and this is just the beginning. >> are you going to answer the question, senator hagel. the question is were you right or wrong? that's a pretty straight forward question. >> but karma caught up with mccain quickly. about an hour after that, he berated hagel. here's how rand paul reacted to mccain's comments. let's listen. >> i find the argument spurious and really frankly absurd. >> on laura ingram's radio show, louisiana senator marco rubi on the emigration issue. >> i love and respect marco, i think he's amazingly naive. >> wow, in other words, he cares about hispanics. in a colossal put down, chris chistie hung the blame for post-sandy suffering squarely on republicans. >> there's only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these innocent victims. the house majority and their speaker, john boehner. >> you know, joy, this was an old democratic problem. >> yes. >> it was called democrats in disarray. you could put it up on every newspaper
hoover. >> are we really to believe that senator john mccain, who once had a few objections of his own towards george w. bush, is really upset because chuck hagel compared w. with herbert hoover? you are republicans trying to subvert the foreign policy of the united states over an old and bitter grudge? let's bring in ari melber and democrat strategist julian ep sto epstein. what is senator mccain's problem? is he trying to defend a mode okur president bush or is he trying to defend a failed war in iraq? >> i think it's more iraq where we know senator mccain has long stood by our presence there and adding troops there, but bottom line if you take this as the mccain filibuster standard, then no one in any democratic administration ever gets a vote because, guess what? a lot of them have good faith and i think well-grounded disagreements with george w. bush. so this cannot be the standard. it's not defensible on its own terms and that's the problem. they are erecting a supermajority hurdle for all of this legislation and all of these nominees. this is an old problem from the way the repu
and you know, john mccain is actually the perfect example of why it is about the man himself, and that is he said last night after he had kind of given lots of different explanations, all of them i think are credible from his point of view, that the real fundamental thing that has bothered most of hagel's fellow republicans here, former colleagues here, is the way that he defied his party, defied his president, then george w. bush, on iraq, and that really did not sit well with many republicans here, and they remember that. it's a whole bunch of other issues but that at its core is the fundamental problem. >> so rich, i'll ask you as a republican strategy, are the concerns over chuck hagel serious enough to filibuster and block confirmation? that's the first time this has before happened in the history of u.s. politics. >> well, everybody says that, but that would get two thumbs up in the political fact check so john bolten was blocked and the ambassador to the u.n. was a cabinet level slot. the republicans i think dana have said that they'll probably let this thing go after
at the faces we see of the republican party, the lindsey grahams, the john mccains, the john boehners, they're angry old men. they're not appealing as human beings. forget issuewise. and clearly the democrats have barack obama. and i want to come back to a debate that we were having. you've covered president after president. it doesn't matter how they shift on the issues until they have the right delivery system, the right human beings who are not tone deaf to an attitude that this country wants. they're never going to get back. ronald reagan got that. to your point earlier, john connelley didn't get that, joe. we said this off the air. that's why he was not elected president. i think it's all moot until they change literally and figuratively the faces of the party. >> well, it can't be just the cosmetics, however. >> not cosmetics, but humanity. >> a combination of the two, it's about the subject matter they're dealing with as well as the manner in which they present it. ronald reagan -- my favorite story about ronald reagan was when he was in a deep recession, they decided they had to do

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