Lindsey Graham is light-hearted but strong in his beliefs.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham will not officially announce whether or not he is running for president until June 1. However, he made his intention clear while on the This Morning show on CBS: “I’m running,” said Graham. “Because I think the world is falling apart.”
The Republican Senator is widely known to be an avid defense hawk. At the Lincoln Day Dinner in Iowa, Graham spoke for nearly ten minutes about the need for a firm hand in regards to national security.
“If I’m president of the United States and you’re thinking about joining al-Qaida or ISIL — anybody thinking about that?” said Graham. “I’m not gonna call a judge. I’m gonna call a drone and we’re gonna kill you.”
Graham knows that he is not yet on the radar of most American people. Despite serving office since 1992, he will have to work hard to introduce himself to voters. One of Graham’s most recent accomplishments was to craft a bipartisan immigration reform bill for the Senate.
“I’ve got people who are fans … I’ve got people who are critics … and I’ve got people who say ‘I think I know him but I really don’t know him,’ ” said Graham on the National Public Radio.
Graham is a self styled ‘pragmatic Republican’. He worries that the candidates for the GOP thus far will shift the national debate too much to the right. He deftly answered a question that has been tripping up other Republicans (notably Jeb Bush): should America have invaded Iraq in 2003?
“If I’d known then what I know now, would I have launched a ground invasion? Probably not,” said Graham, referring to the inaccurate information circulating at the time that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. “But that’s yesterday’s thinking. What do we do today, tomorrow and the day after?”
Graham’s off-beat humor and folksy manner endeared him to the Iowans in the audience. He joked about his first client as a young lawyer in a divorce case. “He asked me a question I didn’t know the answer to. He said, if we get divorced are my wife and I still cousins,” said Graham, draw much laughter from the crowd. “The answer is yes in South Carolina … I don’t know about Iowa.”
In the reception afterwards, Graham had one of the longest queues of people wishing to meet him.
