Tag Archives: Lindsey Graham

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Might the impossible happen … again?

donald-trump

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham has issued an extraordinary statement.

The one-time Republican Party presidential candidate is urging Republican officeholders who have endorsed the party’s presumptive nominee, Donald J. Trump, to take back their endorsement.

Then what do you suppose happened? Fellow GOP Sen. Mark Kirk did exactly that. He said he cannot vote for someone who has made blatantly racist comments, which some have said Trump has made regarding a federal judge.

Trump said Gonzalo Curiel cannot judge a case involving Trump University fairly because he’s “a Mexican.” Well, Judge Curiel is an American. Sure, he is of Mexican heritage but the man was born in Indiana and has served as a federal prosecutor in California.

Trump seems to believe that because of Curiel’s heritage, he “hates” the candidate because of a proposal to build a wall from one end of the U.S. border with Mexico to the other.

The furor won’t die down.

Graham’s call for other Republicans to pull back their endorsement might not take hold across the nation. Then again, it might. I cannot predict how it would go.

However, we are starting to hear some chatter among political observers that Trump’s “presumed” nomination might not be so “presumptive” after all.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, who’s endorsed Trump, has labeled his anti-Curiel statement to be racist in nature. Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus has condemned the statement as well. Other Republican leaders have chimed in with similar statements of disgust and disdain.

So, here’s what a few of the talking heads are saying out loud: They are suggesting that Trump’s nomination could be taken away at the convention. How that might happen is anyone’s guess. It’s virtually unprecedented.

No one is suggesting it will happen, only that they wouldn’t be surprised if it does.

Therefore, one seemingly impossible scenario — the notion of someone so totally unfit to become president actually being nominated by a major political party — is being replaced by another even more impossible outcome.

The party could snatch the nomination away from the candidate.

It cannot happen? Well, who would have thought that Donald Trump — of all people — would be on the verge of being nominated to run for the presidency of the United States?

national news, political news

GOP walks tightrope with Trump at top of ballot

Republican hopeful Kelly Ayotte, former Attorney General of the State of New Hampshire, of Nashua, at a debate at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, N.H., Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010. The Republican hopefuls are running for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. (AP Photo/Cheryl Senter)

You’ve heard the phrase, no doubt, of “a distinction without a difference.”

How does a politician “support” another politician without “endorsing” that individual?

This is one of the myriad dilemmas facing Republican pols across the nation as the party gets ready to nominate a certifiable huckster as its next nominee for president of the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/08/us/politics/trump-endorsements-congress-republicans-gop.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

I refer to Donald J. Trump as the huckster.

Some leading Republican politicians, though, are seeking to hedge their bets in occasionally awkward manners.

Consider the statement of U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, the GOP senator from New Hampshire, who said she can “support” Trump but cannot “endorse” him.

Ayotte is facing a potentially difficult re-election effort as Democrats likely will send Gov. Jean Shaheen against her. Ayotte can’t take the full plunge by endorsing Trump but, by golly, she’s going to support him.

A distinction without a difference?

It looks that way to me.

Other leading Republicans are walking away from Trump. Still others are offering tepid support. Sure, some have endorsed the hotel mogul and reality TV celebrity; former campaign foes New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who once called Trump “unfit” for the presidency, and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who once called Trump a “cancer on conservatism” have endorsed him.

It’s the Ayotte caveat, though, that I find most intriguing.

I’ve been watching politics for nearly 40 years. I studied political science in college. I became engaged in the presidential election process starting around 1968, when I shook Sen. Robert Kennedy’s hand at a chance meeting one week before an assassin robbed us all of a chance to see if RFK could be elected president.

This truly is the first time I’ve witnessed such intraparty reticence to clutch the coattails of the presumed party presidential nominee.

But it’s there. It’s real.

Sure, Trump has appealed to millions of Americans who claim to be “angry” with politics as usual. This clown “tells it like it is,” supporters tell us, while they ignore — or laugh off — the abject crassness of his rhetoric and the tastelessness of his insults.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another former primary campaign foe, said it well: “I just really believe that the Republican Party has been conned here, and this guy is not a reliable conservative Republican.”

Just today, on “Meet the Press,” Trump said he would consider raising taxes on wealthy Americans, which by my way of thinking runs utterly counter to standard Republican Party tax principles.

This is the problem facing Republicans across the country as they ponder their own political futures. How do they run with someone who says whatever pops into his head?

Or do they seek to split hairs as finely as they can by “supporting” him without “endorsing” him?

It is tough to be a Republican these days.

 

national news, political news

Remember that GOP pledge of support?

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump looks at a signed pledge during a news conference in Trump Tower, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015 in New York. Trump ruled out the prospect of a third-party White House bid and vowed to support the Republican Party's nominee, whoever it may be. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham says he won’t vote for, or support, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush echoes that view. Bush says Trump is unfit for the presidency and won’t get his vote.

These two men have something in common apart from their mutual distrust and loathing of the guy who beat them in the GOP presidential primary.

They both signed the “pledge” to support the Republican presidential nominee — no matter who he or she is.

Didn’t former New York Gov. George Pataki say just recently that he won’t support Trump?

To be sure, we need to hear from a lot of other former Republican candidates. Sen. Ted Cruz signed the pledge. His running mate — for all of nine days — Carly Fiorina signed it, too. The last candidate to drop out, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, also has made his feelings quite clear about Trump: He can’t stand him, either — and, oh yes, he signed the pledge, too.

Ben Carson’s already on board with Trump. So is former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

We need to hear from the rest of the once-huge field.

This is why such phony pledges get candidates in trouble.

I happen to respect Sen. Graham and Gov. Bush very much. I believe they’re standing on a principle. They do not want their party represented by a huckster, which is what they’ve determined Trump to be.

Interestingly, the only GOP candidate to refused initially to sign the pledge was Donald Trump, who later signed it … and then recanted his pledge.

Still, the others did put their names on that pledge.

I guess Graham and Bush can take it all back. Politicians do it all the time.

national news, political news

GOP frontrunner getting softened up for Democrats?

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Donald J. Trump is the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.

I’ll concede that much.

It’s interesting, though, to listen to other Republicans tear into him. It makes me wonder — not that I’m predicting it, given the wackiness of this campaign — whether the intraparty opponents will soften him up for the Democratic candidate who might face him this fall.

Marco Rubio blasts Trump for hiring illegal immigrants to build his hotels. He calls Trump a “con man.”

Ted Cruz accuses Trump of hiring foreign workers over American workers to work in his “world-class companies.”

Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney challenges Trump to release his tax returns.

Lindsey Graham says his party has gone “bats*** crazy” by backing Trump.

It reminds me a bit of the 1988 Democratic primary campaign when Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee introduced the “Willie Horton” issue to voters, reminding them of how Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis signed off on a furlough for a prison inmate who then went on a crime rampage. Republicans seized on that theme and beat Dukakis senseless with it during the fall campaign that year.

And so it goes.

Nothing about this campaign makes conventional sense.

It might be that all this piling on only will strengthen the Republican frontrunner.

It’s making me crazy, y’all.

 

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Sen. Graham shows what’s wrong with GOP

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Don’t get me wrong.

Sen. Lindsey Graham — himself — is not what is wrong with today’s Republican Party. The South Carolinian’s departure this week from the 2016 presidential race illustrates what’s so troubling about others within the GOP.

Graham represents what — for the time being — appears to be a dying breed of Republican. He’s one of those individuals who works with Democrats, not against ’em.

His reputation, thus, has become of one what hardcore Republicans call RINO, a Republican In Name Only.

Graham isn’t a RINO. The label is undeserved, except for the fact that he has many friends on the other side of the Senate chamber, which I guess has become something of a kiss of death these days among the Republican Party “base.”

He became quite critical during his presidential campaign of much of the rhetoric coming from his fellow candidates. Remember when he called Donald Trump a “jackass”? He became one of the first targets that Trump singled out, reciting Graham’s cell phone number aloud at a public event.

Graham, though, had the bad form — in the eyes of his GOP base — to work with Democrats on such issues as climate change, immigration reform and tax reform. It didn’t matter that the former Air Force lawyer has been a staunch advocate for a strong defense and that he has been at the forefront of calling for more — and pardon my use of the euphemism that I detest — “boots on the ground” in the fight against Islamic terrorists.

Perhaps it was Graham’s vote against articles of impeachment against President Clinton in 1998 — as a member of the House Judiciary Committee — that sealed the deal for the GOP base.

Whatever, this faithful Republican is now out of the presidential race because he isn’t hardcore enough to suit the red-meat Republicans who still see Democrats as “enemies” and not more “opponents.”

That’s too bad.

For Graham and for his Republican Party.

 

 

 

national news

How can they live with themselves?

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Lindsey Graham’s home state of South Carolina is in dire peril in the wake of record-setting floods.

The U.S. senator wants the federal government to assist his constituents in helping them recover from the tragedy … as he should.

Graham, a Republican candidate for president, wasn’t so generous when it came to providing aid to help Hurricane Sandy victims in New Jersey. He voted against that request.

Graham voted no on Sandy

He’s not alone.

Remember that tornado that tore through Joplin, Mo., in 2011? Then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said Congress needed to cut money from other agencies to pay for the relief effort.

Tom Cotton was a Republican House member from Arkansas when the Sandy relief package came to a vote. He voted “no,” declaring that Arkansas shouldn’t have to bail out a Northeast state.

This kind of duplicitous thinking is common in Congress.

As for Graham, he’s just the latest in a long and infamous line of politicians who demand help for their own constituents while giving other Americans the back of their hand.

 

national news, political news

Name-calling becomes a hit

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insult

Republicans are becoming the party of name-callers.

Let’s run a little tabulation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham called Donald Trump a “jackass.”

Trump has called Graham, former Govs. Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney “losers.”

Trump also has said that every official in the U.S. government is “stupid.”

House Speaker John Boehner has chimed in with a “jackass” epithet hurled at Sen. Ted Cruz.

I know I’ve missed some, maybe a lot. But these come to mind immediately.

What’s up here? Are the candidates for the presidency getting under each other’s skin?

I’ve lost count of the bad names Sen. John McCain has tossed at folks who disagree with him. Then again, he’s not running for president this time around.

I’ll give the current GOP bunch this much credit: At least they aren’t tossing out f-bombs, at least not publicly.

It was then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s dubious honor to reveal his potty mouth when, during a Senate floor debate years ago, he told Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy to go f*** himself.

Hey, just think: The presidential campaign is just getting warmed up.

 

political news

Anti-PC rhetoric becomes code for rudeness

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You’ve heard politicians say, “Don’t Mess with Texas.”

They say such things to convey some sort of macho image. The phrase they quote, of course, came into being in the 1980s when the Texas General Land Office sought to call attention to littering.

Not very macho, right?

Politicians today are fond of debunking “political correctness.” Oh, they say, “That’s just so PC. Let’s cut that crap and speak the truth.”

Actually, what I find happening to political correctness is that it’s becoming a punching bag for politicians who think it’s OK to be crass, rude, uncaring or lacking in humanity.

Pay attention, Donald Trump. I’m talking about you.

I agree that political correctness at times can be taken too far. Politically correct speech at times does drive me a bit batty. Maybe the most maddening example of PC language appears under photos of hunters who’ve killed game. The caption might refer to the hunter posing with a beast he or he has just “harvested,” to which I say, “BS, man. You ‘harvest’ cotton or wheat.”

Trump uses the anti-PC dodge whenever the media question the intemperate language he uses to describe his Republican Party primary field opponents. Jeb Bush is a “loser”; Lindsey Graham is an “idiot.”

Yes, some of them have hurled personal insults at Trump, too, but Trump tends to employ the anti-PC dodge as his justification for saying outrageous things about other human beings.

Perhaps politicians ought to think more about the Golden Rule than about whether it’s OK to toss political correctness into the toilet.

 

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‘A bro with no ho’?

This item made me chuckle, although I am somewhat ashamed of myself for it.

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has just announced he’s running for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 2016. He’s single. Never been married.

One of his Senate colleagues, fellow Republican Mark Kirk of Illinois, joked upon hearing that Graham said he would have a “rotating first lady” if he’s elected president, that his colleague is “A bro with no ho.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/mark-kirk-lindsey-graham-bro-118882.html?hp=l2_4

Kirk’s crack came during a Senate Appropriations Committee legislative markup session. He made the crack into an open microphone, which means it wasn’t meant to enter the, um, public domain.

But … it did.

Now it’s out there.

Honest to goodness, I actually think Kirk’s comment is funny.

My hunch also is that Graham has enough of a sense of humor to think so, too.

Still, the twinge of political correctness that continues to cling to my conscience makes me slightly embarrassed for admitting that Kirk’s quip made me chuckle.

Aw, what the heck. It’s funny. I’ll leave it at that.

 

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Caitlyn Jenner still a Republican

The woman formerly known as Bruce Jenner once declared himself to be a Republican.

Now that Bruce has become Caitlyn Jenner, at least one Republican presidential contender said Caitlyn is “welcome in my Republican Party.”

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham has rolled out the welcome mat for Caitlyn Jenner, declaring that the GOP is a big tent party after all.

Lindsey Graham: Caitlyn Jenner Is “Welcome” in My Republican Party

I’m totally fine with Sen. Graham’s statement. He’s right, of course. A political party should be a place where people judge others’ most intensely intimate personal decisions. I struggle to think of a decision that is more intimate than changing one’s gender, which is what Jenner has done.

Graham said Jenner is welcome in “my” party. The question among some of us watching this campaign unfold is whether the party really belongs to those such as Graham, who’s known to be a more inclusive sort of politician.

It’s the “base” of the GOP that’s calling the shots. Something tells me the party base isn’t quite so welcoming to Caitlyn Jenner.