When he was a Congressman, I applauded Lindsey Graham, because he led the fight to impeach President Clinton in 1998. He was one of the many stars of the show, willing to go the distance to remove from office a chief executive who had compromised his role by engaging in unseemly private conduct, then lying about it under oath to a grand jury.
In spite of the partisan result which acquitted the President, Lindsey Graham gained a lot of well-deserved notoriety, eventually winning the senate seat previously occupied by longest-term incumbent Strom Thurmond. The centenarian should never have stayed in office as long as he did. One good thing that Senator Graham did for us.
His record in Washington, however, started to worry some conservatives, and certainly a growing constituency of South Carolinians who expected their senator to represent their interests, not those of the Washington Beltway elite. He supported Bush's judicial nominees, but also President Obama's. He has joined the more centrist "Gang of Eight", which has pushed compromise without character in some cases. He voted to increase the debt ceiling, and he even signaled his willingness to renege on the Grover Norquist "No New Taxes" Pledge.
As Congressman Mick Mulvaney argued cogently shortly after rejecting the last-minute fiscal cliff deal, there is good compromise and there is bad compromise. When a prospective home buyer offers to purchase the home for one dollar, a reasonable response would be to slam the door in the person's face. All too often, more center-leaning Republicans like Senator Graham, along with his colleague from Arizona John McCain, have made compromise in itself the final goal, while ignoring or eliminating the long-term consequences of easy-breezy short-term deals. Why support liberal Supreme Court nominees just to get through business? Why add insult to injury to a party which now more than every needs unity, not disparity?
He successfully resisted the appointment of UN Ambassador Susan Rice to Secretary of State. Her lack of knowledge about coordinated attacks and memos demanding more support for Benghazi, and her garbled story about merely reading talking points exposed that Ms. Rice was either immoral or incompetent, unworthy of promotion. "Someone has got to start paying a price around here". Right on, Senator.
Unlike other Senators, Graham will not let go of the Libyan terrorist attack on the US consulate at Benghazi. He demanded information whether the President knew about General Dempsey acknowledged that there should have been "more boots on the ground" to make sure that that consulate. The diplomatic corps succumbed to the attack on September 11, 2012, even though the stationed officials asked for help. One plane was dispatched to the area in order to save the beleaguered staff in the area. The questions which trouble the Senator, and should concern us, stand on what did the President know, and could he (or should he) have done more.
Bravo, Senator Graham!
For the first time in years, Senator Graham is brandishing his judge advocate general bluster from his Congressional days. He pointedly hammered the former Senator from Nebraska, whom President Obama nominated for Secretary of Defense. Hagel's nomination spurred nothing but dissent from leading politicians, including Tom Coburn and a number of Jewish leaders, Democrat and Republican.
In the Armed Service Committee hearings to vet Hagel, Graham's first question asked for clarity about funding and the current war status of this country. Hagel offered that the United States spends five percent of the total budget on defense, although he waffled on that figure. As future leader of the Pentagon, his incertitude on costs was deafening. Graham then rolled out one of Hagel's more disturbing statements, including his indictment of the "Jewish Lobby intimidates a lot of people" in Washington. Graham demanded specifics about "who is intimidated" -- and Graham hammered the provocation of the statement, including the hollowness of the invective, since Hagel offered no evidence of such pressure from Israel on American foreign policy.
Hagel refused to sign a letter to the European Union which would designate that Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Then again, Hagel prompted former President Bill Clinton to move on behalf of Jews in Russia. Hagel has already shown an inconsistent stance on the role of the Senate. Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist organization, but as a Senator he refused to sign a letter which would designate them as such, either
Graham properly demanded to know: 'Do you believe that the sum total of your votes suggests statements about Palestinians would send the worst possible signals to our friends and our enemies?"
Hagel shared unconvincingly that he was convinced that his record would not send a poor message. The South Carolina Senator pressed him to recast his votes. If there was a vote on the floor of the Senate to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, would he vote “Yea”? Hagel “bageled” again, deferring to the President, the same President who refused to stand with Iranian protesters in 2009 and 2011.
The former Senator also refused to sign a letter expressing solidarity with Israel and disappointment with Yasser Arafat for his inaction during the 2000 Intifada. The US Senate wanted to send the message that the PLO terrorists were undermining peace, but Hagel refused to go along.
President Obama has also nominated Top Counter-Terrorism Advisor John Brennan to be director of the CIA, the same advisor who called jihad "Legitimate", the same advisor whom Graham suggested should resign because of his unserious disconnect with Islamic terrorism.
Lindsey Graham has pledged to hold both Brennan and Hagel until he gets answers from the President about the Benghazi attack on September 11, 2012.
Bravo, Senator Graham!
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