Lindsey Graham

The McCain campaign just responded, with a conference call, to Barack Obama's rearticulated plan for an end to the war in Iraq by arguing that Obama's intention to withdraw troops, despite the security improvements, amounts to political posturing, and that he is more concerned with winning the presidential election than winning the war.

Senator Lindsey Graham, one of McCain's chief surrogates, said that Obama was sending this message to American soldiers returning from Iraq: "Appreciate your service, but you didn't do any good."

Obama has always carefully couched his calls for withdrawal from Iraq with talk of the heroism of American troops, and has blamed a lack of political progress in Iraq, which is what the surge was supposed to accomplish, for many of the country's problems.  read more »

Barack Obama the naïve sapling is out, replaced – for the time being at least – by a different caricature: the cunning opportunist, wrapping himself in the mantle of reform in ruthless and amoral pursuit of the White House.

The image began taking hold in the media last week, when Obama rationalized his way out of a previous commitment to make a good-faith effort at participating in the public financing system for the general election.

Given his earlier cutesiness on Nafta, his now infamous 130 “present” votes in the Illinois legislature and his penchant for blaming his staff for his own mistakes, the campaign funding flap could serve as a tipping point in the media’s portrayal of Obama.  read more »

URBANDALE, Iowa—Buoyed by a spate of favorable opinion polls and a palpable buzz around his candidacy, Senator John McCain returned to Iowa last night and brought three other senators along for the ride.

Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Sam Brownback of Kansas—who endorsed Mr. McCain after abandoning his own run for the presidency—and John Thune of South Dakota joined the Arizona senator for an event at his state headquarters in this Des Moines suburb.

Mr. McCain has been spending much of his time in New Hampshire, where he has a realistic chance of winning the Republican primary on Tuesday. His decision to squeeze in a visit to Iowa less than 24 hours before caucusing was due to begin suggested he believes he is making inroads in a state he had once given up on.  read more »

Here are eight states where Democrats could pick off Republican senators as a result.  read more »

I fell for Lindsey Graham during the Impeachment hearings back in '98 when he was still a Congressman. I used to talk to him after the hearings. The things I love about him are: he's independent-minded, incredibly gifted politically, and he has the common touch. He's a populist with a soft way about him, till he gets his dander up. "Is this Peyton Place or is this Watergate?" he used to say during the impeachment proceedings. (He and I both thought it was Watergate, because of the way that Clinton's women got kneecapped if they thought of speaking out.)

It's time for Senator Graham, who had a military career as an Air Force lawyer, to follow the example of Congressman Walter Jones across the border in North Carolina, and come out against the Iraq war. Declare the Bush strategy a failure, change the mission now, end the occupation, seek a regional concert, some international answer to this disaster rather than trudging deeper and deeper into the big muddy. Graham has the political capital to strike a bigger blow than John Murtha. And every day he waits, more American kids get killed in the name of what?

Among the most durable stereotypes of American political culture is that military officers secretly  read more »

 Among the most durable stereotypes of American political culture is that military officers sec  read more »

When Henry Hyde accuses his Republican colleagues in the Senate of cowardice, and complains that his  read more »