http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=82FCCDE7-EEF1-4638-86D3-7DEBB327204A John McCain: The 11th Commandment
By: Mackenzie Weinger
October 17, 2013 08:50 AM EDT
Sen. John McCain on Thursday called for divided Republicans to unite in the aftermath of the contentious shutdown and debt ceiling fight.
The Arizona Republican told CNN that although Republicans must continue to debate a number of issues splitting the party, “at the end of the day we’ve got to come together.”
“There’s going to be a fight in our party. There’s a fight in our party,” McCain said on “New Day.” “And that has to be waged. And it’s been there before. It’s also about internationalists versus isolationists. There’s debates that are going to go on in our party. And it’s probably healthy for us to have that debate. But at the end of the day we’ve got to come together.”
“Some place along the line we forgot Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment,” he added. “You know what it was? Don’t speak ill of your fellow Republicans. We’ve done way too much of that.”
McCain also predicted that during the next fight the government would not be shut down as “people have been too traumatized.”
“We’re not going to shutdown the government again,” he said. “I guarantee it.”
The lesson of this shutdown and the subsequent deal, McCain said, will hopefully be “stop this foolish childishness.”
“The president won,” he said. “I give him credit. He won. But he should have negotiated more earlier and we could have prevented some of this pain.”
And there is no question that “everybody suffered in this,” the senator said.
“One thing that politicians want, it’s approval,” McCain added. “The American people spoke loud and clear. They disapprove of what we’re doing. So we’ve got to stop this childishness.”