Lindsey Graham’s diabolical plan: How his presidential “candidacy” affects GOP foreign policy

[DonViejo]

The senator may just be pretending to run for president -- but he's setting the bar for hawkish foreign policy

JIM NEWELL

Is Lindsey Graham serious about running for president, or is he just pretending to run for president? That’s the big political question of the moment. Just kidding, it’s not nearly the big political question of the moment, but let’s, er, pretend that it is just for kicks. The best heuristic for determining whether candidates are serious or just pretending — i.e., keeping their name out there just so the stupid shiny-object-chasing media pays attention to them (check!) — is a matter of timing. Have they been visiting early primary states, chasing down staffers, carefully calibrating their positions and so on, for some time? Or did they only just mention that they might run, sort of offhandedly, within the last couple of months?

This test would suggest that Lindsey Graham is definitely only pretending to run for president to get attention. He loves attention — and rarely has trouble getting it. At first blush, it seems unusual that the senator, who appears 10 times on each Sunday talk show each week, would think that there was yet more attention out there for him to garner. But he understands that if you say you may run for president, there are entire new frontiers, soaring vistas yet unexplored, of media attention awaiting your input and willing to aggrandize your every word.

If Lindsey Graham is merely pretending to run for president, it’s working. He is exerting his influence over the field, setting in motion debates that other candidates may not like to have. That’s because Graham’s politics, while conservative, are heterodox around the edges. They do not fit neatly within the conservative consensus.

On domestic policy, and especially tactics for achieving domestic policy, he’s more of what we might call a realist. He believes that climate change is a problem and the GOP needs to come up with a plan to address it. He supports comprehensive immigration reform legislation that he co-authors, something that can’t be said of all co-authors of comprehensive immigration reform legislation. And he doesn’t have much patience for the constant brinkmanship over government funding and debt ceiling bills that Ted Cruz et al. have turned into such a failed art form.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/02/10/lindsey_grahams_diabolical_plan_how_his_presidential_candidacy_affects_gop_foreign_policy/