Sen. Lieberman thought he’d be getting a few extra seconds of speaking time after his ten minutes expired on the Senate floor, but SNL-star-turned-Senator Al Franken put the kabosh on that whole notion. Sen. McCain immediately rose to his longtime friend’s defense and intimated that Franken was degrading the level of collegial discourse that has characterized the Senate for generations.
ThinkProgress was quick to point out that McCain himself appeared to deny a fellow Senator a trivial amount of extra time back during the critical Iraq War debate. The site threw in a few classy references to McCain having Alzheimer’s before concluding that the Arizona Senator had “acted just like Franken did.”
The only problem (and it’s a doozy) is that McCain cut off the Senator after a cloture motion was voted through. ThinkProgress dishonestly (or perhaps because they suffer from Alzheimer’s) cut off the McCain quote — “I will be adhering strictly to the rules” — before he finished by adding “according to postcloture.” What has conveniently escaped ThinkProgress’ attention is that the whole idea of cloture is to cut off debate after a strictly limited time. There has been no cloture vote on the health care bill.
And then there’s the whole issue of the fact that the Senator got to finish his piece: In the incident ThinkProgress cites, Sen. Byrd yielded a few seconds, and McCain then allowed Byrd to not count some of his speaking time toward the cloture limit. Despite the bile-filled chorus of “McAlzheimer’s” and “hypocrisy” currently flooding ThinkProgress, it’s a stretch to say McCain’s behavior was substantially similar to the former SNL star’s.
“Seems like the Alzheimer’s is coming on strong, what a great thing that this WON’T leave us with President Sarah. The GOP says they are the party of Reagan…now more than ever, John McCain proves this is true.” - ThinkProgress user sita001.
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