Sen. John McCain appeared on Fox News Friday morning with a host who asked him to criticize the Obama Administration over the government shutdown. He instead delivered a pile-driver to members of his own party.
"I think it's been terribly handled by the White House, but let's have a little straight talk, Martha," he said. "They wouldn't have had the opportunity to handle it that way if we had not shut down the government on a fool's errand that we were not going to accomplish."
"The whole premise of shutting down the government was the repeal of Obamacare," McCain added, saying "this wouldn't have happened" if Republicans took a different path.
Meanwhile, most Republicans are still refusing to even acknowledge that they did in fact shut down the government. The American public, however, isn't buying it.
According to an NBC News/Wall St. Journal poll released Thursday (PDF), Republicans have tarnished their brand with this latest melee so terribly that they've reached their highest disapproval ratings ever, with just 24 percent of Americans saying they like what the party is doing today.
The numbers for Democrats are much softer, with an approval rating of 39 percent, but the crisis of confidence in the U.S. government this shutdown and talk of default has caused is plainly apparent throughout the rest of the poll.
Sensing her interview with McCain had gone rogue, so to speak, Fox News host Martha MacCallum tried to swing the former presidential candidate back onto the GOP's talking points by asking him whether Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel should resign after death benefits for soldiers' families were temporarily frozen due to the shutdown.
"This is not a reason for him to resign," McCain said. "Everybody should be held accountable for it, but shouldn't the people who created this situation -- shouldn't they be held accountable too?"
This video is from Fox News, aired Oct. 11, 2013 -- McCain talks tough on gov't stalemate: 'We better wake up'