John McCain: I Stand By My Tea Party Criticism

U.S. John McCain, R-Ari, who's faced much tougher challenges than the current one, is striking back at Tea Party critics -- McCain refused to apologize for calling the Tea Party lawmakers "hobbits" in a speech in July.

When asked by angry constituents in his home starte to apologize for remarks he made during the U.S. debt deal debate in July, McCain refused, nydailynews.com Tuesday.

"I am sorry if it was misunderstood. I am not sorry for what I said," McCain said at a town hall meeting in Gilbert, Ariz., thehill.com reported Tuesday.

McCain added, "Why should I when it's the facts?" In July, McCain criticized some members of the Republican Party for not supporting House Speaker John Boehner's, R-Ohio, deficit plan by making a "Lord of the Rings" reference on the Senate floor.

McCain accused certain lawmakers of being "Tea Party hobbits." "There was no way that a balanced-budget amendment would have passed the Senate," McCain explained to his constituents at the town hall meeting.

"If anyone said that it could, they were not being truthful," McCain said. "Hobbits are not real, and the point is that it was not real. You shouldn't deceive people and say that something like a balanced-budget amendment could happen."

The very conservative/libertarian Tea Party faction of the Republican Party gained followers in part due to the American public's bewilderment at the dizzying array of special facilities and interventions by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.S. Congress needed to both keep credit markets liquid and to provide fiscal stimulus to the U.S. economy.

Those policies are aimed at stabilizing the corporate capitalist system that many Tea Party members benefit from, which Tea Party critics say speaks to a philosophical contradiction inherent in the political faction. Others have noted the small segment of the ideological spectrum that the faction represents and its unwillingness to compromise in a U.S. Constitutional system that requires almost continual political compromise -- the bicameral national legislature, the Congress, itself, stems from a compromise -- as two factors that suggest the Tea Party is incapable of governing the United States.

Political/Public Policy Analysis: Sen. McCain is not backing down one bit from his observation, and that's to his credit. McCain's career has been defined by consensus-building, policy making, and prudent governance.