A Senator’s Stand on Drones Scrambles Partisan Lines

WASHINGTON — Senator Rand Paul’s intention was to highlight his misgivings about how drones are used. He ended up enmeshing his fellow Republicans in a broader debate over national security that scrambled the politics of left and right.

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Senate Vote 32 — Confirmation of John Brennan as C.I.A. Director

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Senator Lindsey Graham, far right, was critical Thursday of Rand Paul’s drone-based filibuster.

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After invoking and being embraced by civil-liberties-minded liberals during a 13-hour filibuster starting Wednesday on the Senate floor, Mr. Paul, of Kentucky, was showered with praise on Thursday by both the Tea Party movement and the provocateurs of the peace group Code Pink. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, praised Mr. Paul’s conviction.

Mr. Paul, a libertarian in the mold of his father, former Representative Ron Paul, pointedly questioned whether the government had the authority to kill an American citizen in the United States with a drone strike — an effort that generated a tremendous following on social media.

But he was assailed by two of his party’s most prominent national security hawks, Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. They took to the floor on Thursday to defend President Obama’s aggressive use of drones against Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to suggest that Mr. Paul and his backers had engaged in scaremongering.

“We’ve done, I think, a disservice to a lot of Americans by making them think that somehow they’re in danger from their government,” Mr. McCain said. “They’re not. But we are in danger from a dedicated, longstanding, easily replaceable-leadership enemy that is hellbent on our destruction.”

Mr. Paul won particular support from two other Tea Party-backed Republicans, Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah. The three spelled one another during the filibuster on Wednesday afternoon and evening, drawing in part from a huge positive response on Twitter to their efforts.

But with Tea Party supporters having demonstrated the ability to mount primary challenges to incumbents they consider insufficiently conservative, an array of other Republican senators showed up on the Senate floor late Wednesday night to support Mr. Paul’s filibuster.

They included Mr. McConnell, who has been moving vigorously to shut down chatter about a potential primary challenge to his re-election campaign next year, and Senator Marco Rubio, who has drawn some Tea Party criticism for his openness to an immigration overhaul that would give illegal immigrants a chance at gaining citizenship.

As Republicans went at one another and White House officials watched in amusement, the administration directly answered the question at the heart of Mr. Paul’s filibuster. No, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a letter Thursday to Mr. Paul, the president does not have the authority to use a drone to kill a United States citizen on American soil who is not engaged in combat.

Mr. Holder did not say how the president would determine who is an enemy combatant. And he did not back off his statement on Wednesday that the president has the authority to pursue military action inside the United States in extraordinary circumstances, an assertion that helped set off Mr. Paul’s filibuster.

Late Thursday afternoon, the Senate went on to address what Mr. Paul had been seeking to delay with his filibuster, the confirmation of John O. Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. After Democrats threatened to keep in the Senate in session through the weekend to deal with the confirmation, Republicans allowed a quick vote and Mr. Brennan was approved, 63 to 34.

Among those voting in favor of Mr. Brennan was Mr. Graham, who had earlier indicated that he might vote no but said Thursday that he would support the nomination to send a signal that he backs the drone program.

By the time the Senate adjourned for the weekend, a Republican Party that had long assailed Mr. Obama as a leader who would turn a war on terrorism into a police action with Miranda rights for suspects had shown itself to be sharply divided over whether the president had instead grabbed too much power and was risking violating the Constitution in his efforts to keep the nation safe.

“The question of whether the United States government can kill a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil when that individual does not pose an imminent threat of death or grievous bodily harm is a fundamental issue of liberty,” Mr. Cruz said. “It is an issue of enforcing the explicit language of our Constitution.”

While the events of the day brought into sharp relief the strains within the various components of the conservative movement, they also highlighted bipartisan unease in Congress over Mr. Obama’s policy of keeping information about the drone program tightly held.