Source:C-SPAN– U.S. Senator John McCain (Republican, Arizona)

Source:The New Democrat

“Senator John McCain (R-AZ) on Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) following the Senator’s objection to a bill advancing Montenegro’s bid to join NATO. “The Senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin.” Full Senate session here:C-SPAN”

From C-SPAN

Just to give you a little background on this relationship (if you want to call it that) between Senator John McCain and Senator Rand Paul: (Republican, Kentucky) they seriously dislike and disrespect each other. Oh, you want more. Well, I’ll give it to you anyway.

Senator John McCain comes from a longline of center-right, Neoconservatives in the Republican Party, going back to the 1960s, if not further, people who at one point in some cases, were Liberal Democrats. (Meaning people who believe in liberal democracy) Even though the so-called mainstream media like to call these Republicans moderates today, McCain has never been a moderate.

John McCain has always been a Neoconservative, especially on foreign policy and national security, but on economic policy as well. Teddy Roosevelt is one of the most famous Progressive Republicans ever, was one of McCain’s political heroes. And Neoconservatives, look like Progressive Republicans, at least today.

Rand Paul, at least when he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, was a Conservative Libertarian, who is fairly dovish and isolationist on foreign policy and national security, like most Libertarians. And since his failed presidential run of 2016, it occurred to him that he represents Kentucky, which is like the capital of Redneckistan in the MAGA movement in the country and now sounds and acts like MAGA Nationalist Republican. And those folks are to the opposite of the Neoconservative center-right in the Republican Party and are competing factions.

So of course Senator McCain was in favor of letting Montenegro join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2017, because they were under attack by Russia and Vladimir Putin wants them to be part of his new Slavic empire that he has dreamed up for himself.

And of course Senator Paul is against this, because he doesn’t believe America should be in the business of defending the freedom and democracy of other countries. And since Vladimir Putin is a hero of MAGA, he doesn’t believe (at least publicly) that America should be in the business to confront Vladimir Putin, because that could hurt him politically at home in Kentucky.