Bloomberg View
(Editorial)
June 1, 2015
It's
a shame that Senator Lindsey Graham, who on Monday joined the
burgeoning field of Republican presidential candidates, is best known
for his foreign-policy stands.
Graham's blunt pronouncements on national security can tend to careen
between humor and bluster, to the point that it can be hard to know if
the senator from South Carolina -- let alone his audience -- gets his
own jokes.
Under
a President Graham, he recently told a Republican audience in Iowa, any
American who even thinks of joining Islamic State would be marked for
extrajudicial execution.
“I'm gonna call a drone, and we're gonna kill you,” he said.
That was a joke. Right?
Graham's
ballistic foreign-policy routine attracts attention, but it's his
pragmatism in domestic affairs that merits a larger audience. He
provided a rare Republican
vote confirming U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch in April, and was
an unflinching supporter of the bipartisan immigration reform that
passed the Senate in 2013. (Had the plan not died in the House,
immigration wouldn't be so vexing to Graham's fellow Republican
presidential candidates today.) Just as important, Graham seems
disinclined to back away from reform now that he's running for
president.
Grasping
the threat posed by carbon pollution, he backed a cap-and-trade
initiative to establish a market for greenhouse-gas emission credits.
“From a biblical point of
view, we were counseled by God to be good stewards of the environment,”
he said recently.
Neither
climate change policy nor immigration reform has been an especially
high priority for many South Carolina Republicans. But Graham backed the
proposals, reached
out to make deals with senators in both parties and trusted he could
sell the merits to his constituents. That's leadership.
Whether
it's the kind of leadership his party seeks in 2016 remains to be seen.
In 2010, Graham suggested the nascent Tea Party would soon burn out.
“It’s just unsustainable
because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the
country,” he said recently.
Graham's
qualitative assessment was largely on the mark. That his timing was off
-- both the Tea Party and the ideological rigidity it champions remain
potent forces in
Republican politics -- may be the biggest obstacle to his presidential
ambitions.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment