Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) blamed tea party Republicans for the government shutdown during a CNN interview on Wednesday, saying Congress never had a shot at defunding Obamacare.
“We started this on a fool’s errand, convincing so many millions of Americans and our supporters that we could defund Obamacare,” McCain said.
While McCain didn’t name names, he faulted members of Congress — “tea partiers specifically” — for wrongly telling “millions of Americans” that Obamacare can be defunded.
That “obviously wouldn’t happen until we had 67 Republican senators to override a presidential veto,” McCain said.
McCain denounced the fight to defund Obamacare at the cost of a fiscal impasse even before the govenrment shut down last week. McCain called out Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for his anti-Obamacare speech, and said “the people spoke” when they reelected President Barack Obama in 2012