Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham are ripping Sen. Rand Paul over his filibuster. Excerpt:

Graham also chided his fellow Republicans on the floor for joining Paul in his filibuster.

“To my Republican colleagues, I don’t remember any of you coming down here suggesting that President Bush was going to kill anybody with a drone, do you?” Graham said. “They had a drone program back then, all of a sudden this drone program has gotten every Republican so spun up. What are we up to here?”

Graham, who has railed against the president for the administration’s handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, praised Obama’s use of the drone program.

“People are astonished that President Obama is doing many of the things that President Bush did. I’m not astonished. I congratulate him for having the good judgment to understand we’re at war,” he said. “And to my party, I’m a bit disappointed that you no longer apparently think we’re at war.

I’ll give Graham this: some, and perhaps all, of the Republican senators who joined Rand Paul’s filibuster were no doubt doing it because it was an opportunity to whack Obama. But that charge will not stick to Rand Paul. Maybe, just maybe, Paul showed leadership, instead of followership. How about that.

On Facebook, Hillsdale’s Brad Birzer writes:

After reading about McCain’s response to Rand Paul, I can’t help but wonder: Could anything more clear than that the Republicans of the previous generation no longer have any purpose or integrity except to continue to exist. There have been revolts against such idiotic elites in the past in the history of the party–and it’s time to launch another one. This time with the two most articulate persons in the U.S. government: Senators Paul and Cruz.