McCain, Rand Paul at war over national security

Hostilities have erupted again between Republican U.S. Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

In a Fox News appearance, McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, hammered Paul, who is seeking the the 2016 GOP nod, as "the worst possible candidate, of the 20 or so that are running, on the most important issue, which is national security."

McCain was responding to an earlier Fox News broadside from Paul that characterized McCain and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a McCain ally on national-security issues who also is considering a presidential run, as "lapdogs" for President Barack Obama and the White House strategy toward the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

"I'm the only one actually standing up and saying the war in Libya was a mistake," the libertarian-leaning Paul said. "The bombing of (Syrian President Bashar) Assad would make ISIS stronger. The arms to the Islamic rebels would make ISIS stronger. So I'm really the one standing up to President Obama, and these people are essentially the lapdogs for President Obama, and I think they're sensitive about that."

McCain scoffed that Paul has been wrong on Iran and last year "publicly doubted whether ISIS was a threat to the United States national security."

"The list goes on and on," McCain said. "... The record is very clear that he simply does not have an understanding about the needs and the threats of United States national security."

The latest escalation suggests that the two senators cannot resist going after each other, even though both have told The Arizona Republic over the past few years that they get along and have a cordial relationship.

The latest round follows a 2013 incident when McCain called Paul and others "wacko birds" and subsequently apologized and a 2014 episode in which Paul erroneously accused McCain of posing for a photo with ISIS extremists in Syria. The Internet claim that McCain met with ISIS in 2013 has been thoroughly debunked, and Paul told The Republic in January that the two had "made up." McCain's office said that Paul privately apologized to McCain on the Senate floor.

"When we talked, I said, 'You know, sometimes, I can get overboard, and, sometimes, both of us can get overboard,'" Paul said at the time.

Paul and McCain also have clashed on the Senate floor over U.S. drone policy, which is coming under new scrutiny following the White House's revelation Thursday that two hostages, an American and an Italian, inadvertently were killed in a January anti-terrorist drone attack in Pakistan.

One political expert said the McCain-Paul feud has justification because it is based on an important philosophical difference.

"A lot of politics is just theater, but this is real," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "Because McCain deeply believes in an activist American foreign policy and Rand Paul clearly does not. There's a wide gulf there, no matter how they try to paper it over."

In other developments:

-- Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner, is establishing an early presence in all 50 states, including reliably red ones such as Arizona.

"It's a symbolic move, and Arizona is not completely out-of-reach depending on the economy," said John J. "Jack" Pitney, Jr., a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. "It's her effort to show that she's a national candidate."

Cynthia Aragon is the Clinton campaign's Arizona grassroots organizer. Per the campaign, Aragon has worked as constituent outreach director and policy adviser for the Arizona House of Representatives' Democratic caucus and as a field director for U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz.

President Bill Clinton in 1996 became the only Democrat to carry Arizona since President Harry Truman did so in 1948.

-- As expected, McCain and U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., split Thursday over the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as the next U.S. attorney general. McCain opposed the nomination while Flake supported it.

"While I disagree with Ms. Lynch on many policy positions, I have always believed that the Senate should give deference to the president to pick his Cabinet unless there is something disqualifying in a nominee's background," Flake said in a written statement. "Furthermore, with Loretta Lynch confirmed, (outgoing U.S. Attorney General) Eric Holder's tenure as head of the Department of Justice draws to a close. Not a bad day in Washington."

McCain voted against the nomination because he disagreed with Lynch's contention that Obama's executive action on immigration was reasonable and constitutional.

The attorney general's job is to serve the people and "not to serve as a policy instrument or cheerleader for the president," McCain said.

Nowicki is The Republic's national political reporter. Follow him on Twitter at @dannowicki and on his official Facebook page.