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Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) took a break from blaming “that one” — known to the rest of the country as President Barack Obama – for the nation’s many ills and directed his ire where it belongs: his own Republican Party.

Speaking with Fox anchor Martha MacCallum, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee criticized President Obama for not negotiating with House Republicans on reinstating death benefits to military families, instead accepting an offer from The Fisher House Foundation “to provide the families of the fallen with the benefits they so richly deserve,” said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a statement.

Though the Pentagon will reimburse the foundation after the shutdown ends, McCain admitted that it would have never gotten to this point if the GOP hadn’t been holding the nation hostage and demanding the defunding of Obamacare as ransom:

“Let’s have a little straight talk, Martha,” McCain said. “[The administration] 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. I fought against Obamacare harder than any of the people who wanted to shut down the government.”

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Though McCain believes that Republicans have some political leverage for negotiations and, potentially, some attainable goals, he insisted that “defunding Obamacare is not one of them.”

Watch McCain’s remarks below via Talking Points Memo:

Sen. John McCain To Fox News: GOP To Blame For Gov’t Shutdown [VIDEO]  was originally published on newsone.com