Just in terms of style, has there ever been a more obsequious opportunist than Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina? Here is somebody who voted for the bank bailouts, the confirmation of two liberal Supreme Court nominees, national ID cards, amnesty for “illegals”, and is known and loved by the liberal media for his penchant for “reaching across the aisle” – in short, a RINO – now trying to save his own neck in the midst of a conservative upsurge. How is he doing it? By warmongering, of course.
In the case of a desperate politician like Sen. Graham, who is clearly in the Tea Party’s sights, what he’s trying to do ought to be clear enough: he’s trying to do what every politician spends most of his time doing – get reelected. And the only way he can do that, given his record of denouncing the tea partiers as “angry white guys,” is by splitting the rightist vote, and deflecting the threat to his political ambitions. In his remarks to the Canadian conference, Graham went on to say:
“Nobody would like to see the sanctions work any more than I would because I’m still in the military and I get to meet these young men and women on a regular basis and I know what it’s been like for the last nine years. And if you use military force, if sanctions are not going to work, and a year from now it’s pretty clear they’re not going to work, what do our friends in Israel do?”
It’s pretty obvious what’s up here: Graham is appealing to the Christian evangelicals of John Hagee‘s sort – the fanatical “Christian Zionists” – who go around waving Israeli flags and believe a war with Iran is prophesied in the Bible. That may sound like a marginal group, but it isn’t: millions believe this, and South Carolina has more than its share. Sen. Graham has a record in these circles: he’s appeared on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, the principal outlet for Hagee’s propaganda, several times, and – more ominously – when Israeli “tourism” minister Benny Elon made a special trip to the US to discuss the prospect of forcibly “resettling” the Palestinians to Jordan, Graham met with him to plot strategy.
