 Two of the Republicans, McCain and Lindsey Graham, had been members of the "Gang of 14"; McCain did not explain his vote in terms of the "extraordinary circumstances" clause of that agreement, but Graham said Hamilton's views were "so far removed from the mainstream" that a vote against cloture was warranted.In September 2009, as the debate about the proper U.S. course of action in the Afghanistan War grew, McCain wrote with colleagues Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman that