"We all have our understanding of Senator McCain's persistence and his determination to go forward in what he considers to be a good cause. There has never been a demonstration of the importance of that persistence quite as dramatic as his comeback from this campaign. We can remember the time when all of the pundits and, frankly, all the rest of us, myself very much included, wrote off the McCain campaign, assuming that Senator McCain was lying dead in the gutter by the side of the road. I remember talking with some of his supporters in this Chamber at that time who said the McCain campaign is reeling and we don't know whether it is going to ever come back. I remember the rumors that flowed around this town, where people said: We cannot raise any money for the McCain campaign. No one wants to contribute to a lost cause. John McCain, perhaps alone--maybe he had the support of his wife; I assume he did--said: No, I am going to go forward. He picked himself off, took himself off to New Hampshire, and did the same kind of thing he did 8 years ago when he ran against President Bush. In this case, he not only won New Hampshire, but he was able to expand that to wins elsewhere, to the point where we have the result today. So he deserves our congratulations as we recognize this truly extraordinary political accomplishment on his part."