He invoked Republicans’ secular saint — President Ronald Reagan. “I will say to my friends who were objecting to this — and there are a number of them on my side — you can call yourself Republicans. That’s fine, because that’s your voter registration. Don’t call yourself Reagan Republicans. Ronald Reagan would never, would never let this kind of aggression go unresponded to by the American people.”

He went on, “So now because of an IMF fix, or a campaign finance fix, we are now going to reject a piece of legislation that was done in a bipartisan basis with the leadership of the chairman who I see on the floor, of which I’m proud, ranking member, Senator Corker of Tennessee, and we’re going to say ‘no.’ And you know the most ridiculous thing about all of this is? The majority leader has filed cloture. We have well over 60 votes. So we’re going to be back in about 11 or 12 days, whatever it is. Cloture will have been expired. It’s well over 60 votes. And we will pass this.”

“I’ve been embarrassed before on the floor of the Senate, I will tell the president. But I haven’t been embarrassed this way about members of my own party,” said McCain.