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Scott Walker and Jeb Bush head a crowded field of prospective Republican presidential candidates in the latest national poll released Thursday. Walker, the Wisconsin governor, polls at 18 percent, and Bush, the former Florida governor, is at 16 percent. The poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University, has New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 8 percent each; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 7 percent; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 6 percent each; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at 5 percent; former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum at 2 percent; and South Carolina Sen....

few weeks ago, Lindsay Graham asked Loretta Lynch an interesting question at her Senate confirmation hearings: “What is the legal difference between a ban on same sex marriage being unconstitutional, but a ban on polygamy being constitutional?" The question, understandably, took her by surprise. “Senator, I have not been involved in the argument or analysis of the cases that have gone before the Supreme Court, and I’m not comfortable undertaking legal analysis without having had the ability to review the relevant facts and the precedent there…but I look forward to continuing the discussions with you." No one takes the issue...

On Monday Senators. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., invited Netanyahu to meet in a closed-door session with Democrats during his visit. Netanyahu declined the invitation on Tuesday and expressed regret about the politically fraught tone of his trip. “I regret that the invitation to address the special joint session of Congress has been perceived by some to be political or partisan,” Netanyahu wrote. “I can assure you that my sole intention in accepting it was to voice Israel’s grave concerns about a potential nuclear agreement with Iran that could threaten the survival of my country.” Netanyahu said to...

Scott Walker was not planning to outsource the job of defining his presidential campaign to Rudy Giuliani, a last-minute add-on to his New York speaking appearance. But that is exactly what transpired. While unplanned, Giuliani expressed a question of fundamental importance within the Republican Party, which allowed Walker to define himself unmistakably. Giuliani defends his original claim in a Wall Street Journal op-ed today. In it, Giuliani argues that Obama is “criticizing his country more than other presidents have done, regardless of their political affiliation,” and likewise fails to express “a fundamental belief in the country’s greatness and the example...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Potential Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham has "no doubt" that President Obama loves his country, refuting comments made by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani earlier this week. “Well, I love Rudy, but I don’t want to go there. The nation’s very divided. President Obama has divided us more than he’s brought us together and I don’t want to add to that division,” Graham initially said on ABC's "This Week" today, before adding, “I have no doubt that he loves his country. I have no doubt that he’s a patriot. But his primary job as president of the United...

Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a possible dark horse 2016 presidential candidate, said Sunday that it’s counterproductive for conservatives to question President Obama’s patriotism. “I don’t think it helps to question the president’s patriotism or motives,” Pence said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Lindsey Graham: I Love Rudy but I Have No Doubt Obama Loves America by Andrew Kirell | February 22nd, 2015 On ABC’s This Week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) became the latest Republican to get asked to creatively distance themselves from Rudy Giuliani‘s comments that President Barack Obama “doesn’t love” America. Earlier Sunday, Gov. Mike Pence (R-IN) was asked by Fox to comment on the comments, because why not. His response: “I don’t think it helps to question the president’s patriotism or motives,” but, at the same time, Rudy’s a good guy. If you guess that Graham’s comments wouldn’t be much...

Senator Ted Cruz, the boat-rocking limited government constitutional conservative Senator from Texas, provided another one of his patented cross examinations of a smoke-blowing government official at a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz, the son of legal immigrants from Cuba, asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about border security measures – the so-called “triggers” – contained in the “Gang of Eight's” immigration bill. Specifically, Senator Cruz asked, “If there are no objective metrics, if it is simply the subjective assessment of a host of factors, how can we have any confidence that the border will be secured and that any...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is the front-runner in a new 2016 Republican presidential preference poll in South Carolina, while U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is close enough to make it a statistical tie here. But the news is less favorable for Graham in three other early voting states - Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada - where his level of support registers at negligible among GOP voters, totalling at 1 percent and below. The poll, by the conservative Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, put Walker is out front in South Carolina but statistically tied with Graham, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and...

LINDSEY GRAHAM DEAD LAST IN PRESIDENTIAL SURVEY. We’ve never had much use for conservative commentator Glenn Beck, but lots of people swear by his opinion … and he frequently opines on presidential politics. Like his recently released presidential preference poll – in which his readers graded twenty-eight prospective “Republican” candidates on a scale from “100” (a.k.a. “the best score possible”) all the way down to “55,” which is the equivalent of “all F votes.” The winner? Well it sure as hell wasn’t U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham – whose warmongering flirtation with the White House earned a dismal response from Beck’s...

Sen. Lindsey Graham is knocking Sen. Ted Cruz’s effort to block Loretta Lynch from becoming attorney general over immigration. Graham said Cruz’s proposed blockade would just leave Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in charge. “Nobody is going to say that the executive order is illegal that President Obama appoints, so the idea that we would block an attorney general nominee until you’ve gotten somebody to agree with Sen. Cruz about the executive order is probably not feasible,” he said. “It ensures that Eric Holder stays in place for two years. It’s picking a fight that we can’t win.” Graham,...

Potential presidential contender Lindsey Graham thinks he can appeal to typically right-skewed Republican presidential primary voters, despite non-conservative views on immigration, climate change and federal spending. Graham, a Republican senator representing South Carolina, is serious about his recently declared interest in entering the already packed 2016 GOP field, even while the move has left the political punditry puzzled. On Thursday, Graham announced the launch of a formal exploratory committee, “Security through Strength,” to determine, he said, if he can enter the race with a viable campaign. Graham last week began selling his candidacy on Capitol Hill, telling reporters if he...

Sen. McCain admitted on CNN that even he wouldn’t support Sarah Palin if she would run for president in 2016. Video: (VIDEO-AT-LINK)McCain offered up his standard defense of Palin, but when he was asked if he thought that she should run for president, he changed his tune. McCain said, “I think that she ought to do whatever she feels that she’d like to do. I’m very supportive of anything that she does. Obviously, Sen. Lindsey Graham is the person I’m supporting, but I wish her every success.” McCain said that Palin could be an asset in 2016 because she still...

Senator Lindsey Graham is on a roll, and not in a good way. Just days after announcing his willingness to make the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act virtually useless in actually saving babies just to appease a handful of cowardly GOP turncoats, the South Carolina Republican thought it would be a good idea to bring up attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch’s past support for partial-birth abortion…not because it shows she’s a monstrous extremist who shouldn’t be a dogcatcher, let alone the nation’s top cop, but because he wants to demonstrate how bipartisan he is by supporting her anyway. Yes, really:...

Attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch won the backing of a senior Republican senator during the second day of her Senate hearings Thursday, a big step on her path to be confirmed as the first black woman to lead the Justice Department. [Snip] "I'm going to be a strong supporter of her nomination," Hatch told the witnesses. "And I believe she's not only qualified, but exceptionally well qualified, and a very good person, to boot." Two other committee Republicans, Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona, have indicated they'll support her nomination, which would give her the...

During Loretta Lynch's confirmation hearing Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tried to take the attorney general nominee down the slippery-slope argument often made against the marriage equality movement by inquiring what the legal difference is between marriage of same-sex couples and that of three or more people. 'What is the legal difference between a state -- a ban on same-sex marriage being unconstitutional but a ban on polygamy being constitutional?" he inquired at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. "Could you try to articulate how one could be banned under the Constitution and the other not?" Lynch, who is the current...

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 28, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- After a revolt by Republican women indefinitely delayed the House vote on the Pain Capable Unborn Child Act, Sen. Lindsey Graham has promised that when he introduces his version in the Senate he will leave out a provision requiring women to report their rapes to the authorities. “Nobody’s for rape,� Graham told Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill. Republican congresswomen led by Renee Ellmers and Jackie Walorski spiked the vote, which was to take place on the same day as the 2015 March for Life, over a legal mandate that women who...

The GOP accepts the notion of climate change - but not the way Democrats wanted them to.Senate Republicans head-faked Democrats on climate change Wednesday, agreeing in a floor vote that the planet’s climate was changing, but blocking language that would have blamed human activity. In a complicated maneuver that was the first politically perilous test for Senate Republicans, the new majority party split up the votes that Democrats had hoped would force the GOP into an awkward roll call on whether they believed in the science behind climate change — just hours after President Barack Obama slammed Republicans in his...

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Graham announced that he has set up a committee to see "whether a guy like Lindsey Graham has a viable path." "We're not polling, but we set up a testing-the-waters committee under the IRS code," he said earlier.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has set up a committee he says will help him look beyond his home state to determine if he might have a “viable path” to the Republican presidential nomination. […] Graham said in December he was thinking about seeking the GOP nomination. He has been a close ally of Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Republicans’ presidential nominee in 2008. …

A Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee says Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki cannot keep his country together, and a U.S. alliance with Iran might be needed to do so. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday a U.S. partnership with longtime foe Iran makes him uncomfortable but likened it to the United States working with Josef Stalin in World War II against Adolf Hitler. He says the United States has to do what it can to keep Baghdad from falling to insurgents. "We should have discussions with Iran to make sure they don't use this as an opportunity...

Have you felt the burgeoning public groundswell for a 2016 Lindsey Graham presidential bid? You haven’t? Well, Lindsey Graham has: “I’m not doing it to make a statement. I’m doing it to change the country and offer what I have to offer to the American people, and to my party. And I think I’m uniquely qualified to deal with the threats we’re talking about. So when I hear a United States Senator trying to rationalize that Iraq created the problems in France, and when I hear some libertarians on my side of the aisle associated with the Republican Party...

Republicans on Capitol Hill weighed in on news that Mitt Romney might be exploring a possible third bid for the White House, but it was Arizona Sen. John McCain who might have drawn the most laughs of the day in talking about the potential presidential aspirations of his best friend Sen. Lindsey Graham. McCain said Romney was dedicated to serving the country and was a fine and decent American with a reservoir of support and called himself "a great admirer of Mitt Romney's", but he said he was pushing Graham to run. "My illegitimate son Lindsey Graham is exploring that...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Saturday that the Senate will take up an Iran sanctions bill in January, setting up a tough vote for Democrats. During an appearance alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Graham said there will be a vote on legislation drafted by Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) in January. The measure would impose additional sanctions on Iran if it violates the interim nuclear agreement or walks away from talks. "I’m here to tell you, Mr. Prime Minister, that the Congress will follow your lead," Graham said. "In January...

"I think he is looking at it, and I am strongly encouraging him to take a look at it," said Arizona Senator and former GOP presidential nominee John McCain, of a possible presidential bid by his colleague and friend Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, (R). "I know of no one who is better versed and more important on national security policy and defense than Lindsey Graham, and I don't think these challenges to our security are going away," added McCain.

The Jerusalem Post reports: Secretary of State John Kerry would not guarantee the US will veto unilateral Palestinian actions at the United Nations, speaking to reporters on Tuesday. “We’ve made no determinations about language, approaches, specific resolutions, any of that,” the secretary told the press in London. “This isn’t the time to detail private conversations. or speculate on a UN Security Council resolution that hasn’t even been tabled.” Tabled yet or not, Jordan and France have publicly declared their intentions to move forward with resolutions that would set a UN-mandated timeline for Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank, without approval...

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today released the following statement on President Obama’s plans to ease U.S. restrictions on Cuba and normalize diplomatic relations: “We agree with President Obama that he is writing new chapters in American foreign policy. Unfortunately, today’s chapter, like the others before it, is one of America and the values we stand for in retreat and decline. It is about the appeasement of autocratic dictators, thugs, and adversaries, diminishing America’s influence in the world. Is it any wonder that under President Obama’s watch our enemies are emboldened and our...

Fox News reports:Graham thinking about presidential bid http://fxn.ws/1BUZ2XFWhich Graham? I mean, it couldn’t be Lindsey Graham, the senior U.S. Senator from South Carolina, in Congress from 1995 to 2003 and in the Senate ever since. There’s no market for a moderate Republican whose main passion is foreign interventionism, right? And yet, that’s exactly what the story says. Here are six other Grahams you’d probably rather see run for the highest office in the land before Lindsey Graham. Heather Graham:? She was great as Rollergirl in Boogie Nights but also as Daisy in the satire Bowfinger. She’s a children’s rights activist...

Taking a few minutes this morning to watch Congressman Trey Gowdy and the House Select Committee on ‪#‎Benghazi‬.

So Lindsey Graham is on the warpath ... again. In the past month, South Carolina's senior senator has been busy - which stands in stark contrast to most members of Congress this time of year. Or any time, for that matter. Not only has the hawkish Graham renewed his call to send troops into Syria, he also criticized the release of a report that detailed the CIA's rather torturous methods of extracting information from suspected terrorists. Graham didn't exactly endorse waterboarding, mind you, but he made it clear that enemy detainees really don't want to be locked in a dark...

Conservative talk show how Rush Limbaugh said Thursday on his radio show that conservatives have lost the gay marriage debate and that it is now “inevitable.” “This issue is lost,” he said. “I don’t care what the Supreme Court does. This is inevitable. And it’s inevitable because we lost the language on this.” Limbaugh added that conservatives lost the debate because they allowed the term “marriage” to be “bastardized.” “As far as I’m concerned, once we started talking about gay marriage, traditional marriage, opposite-sex marriage, same-sex marriage, hetero marriage, we lost,” Limbaugh said. “It was over.”

Washington (CNN) -- South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is getting encouragement from a close colleague and friend, Sen. John McCain, to run for President. "I think he is looking at it, and I am strongly encouraging him to take a look at it," McCain, an Arizona Republican, told ABC News in a story published Monday. "I know of no one who is better versed and more important on national security policy and defense than Lindsey Graham, and I don't think these challenges to our security are going away." Graham floated the possibility of a run in an interview with the...

Sen. John McCain is prodding one of his closest allies in the Senate to consider a run for the White House – Sen. Lindsey Graham. “I think he is looking at it, and I am strongly encouraging him to take a look at it,” McCain, R-Ariz., told ABC News. “I know of no one who is better versed and more important on national security policy and defense than Lindsey Graham, and I don’t think these challenges to our security are going away.” “He is eminently qualified,” McCain added. In an interview with The Weekly Standard last month, Graham, R-S.C., said...

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday criticized a recently released House Republican report that concludes no intelligence lapses in connection with the fatal Benghazi attacks, saying congressional investigators did a “lousy job.” “I think the report is full of crap,” Graham, a Republican, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Michelle Bachmann is one of those Republican firebrands who will keep Hispanics voting in the Democratic column for a long time. She said the President's policy announced Thursday night means those immigrants he wants to let remain here will become "illiterate" voters. Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) thought the Tea Party leader's comments were "unfortunate, unfair, unnecessary, unwise," the Washington Post reported. The over-the-top response of most Republicans -- totally ignoring similar actions by Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush -- and talk of impeachment will only help Democrats. No one can take Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) seriously when...

Two U.S. senators have written a letter to Chuck Hagel to ask the defense secretary nominee to explain his assertion that "the State Department was becoming an adjunct of the Israeli Foreign Ministry." Hagel, the Washington Free Beacon reported yesterday, made the comment in 2007. "Dear Senator Hagel," Senators Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte write. "Yesterday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that in a 2007 speech at Rutgers University regarding America's relationship with the Middle East you remarked that 'the State Department was becoming an adjunct of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.' According to notes posted on the internet by a...

CNN states that Senator Lindsey Graham was recorded saying "white men who are in male-only clubs are going to do great in my presidency" but his campaign says the quote is taken out of context.

COLUMBIA, SC — THE GOOD THING about Brad Hutto is that he doesn’t try to convince us that Lindsey Graham is a liberal. Which is to say that, unlike the six opponents Mr. Graham easily swept aside in the Republican primary, and unlike the reality-show self-promoter who is self-financing a quixotic independent campaign against him, Mr. Hutto is not unhinged from reality. To the contrary, Mr. Hutto has had a respectable career in the state Senate, where, despite being part of an ever-dwindling minority party, he has had a significant amount of influence on public policy — sometimes for good,...

A bipartisan group of senators from across the political spectrum—from Elizabeth Warren and Patrick J. Leahy to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio—wants President Barack Obama to speak out and act to support Hong Kong’s democracy movement.They don’t specify exactly what they want Obama to do—they say “demonstrable, meaningful steps”—but note that a 1992 law “authorizes you to suspend trade and economic provisions should Beijing not provide sufficient autonomy for Hong Kong.”Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is president pro tempore and Judiciary chairman, leads the letter with Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Rubio.“The people of Hong Kong have sent a strong...

Republican Party has – in years past – been fairly aggressive when it comes to rebuking liberal “Republicans” like U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham. That’s about to change, though … This week, a seismic shift within the party took place … as a key opponent of Graham was ousted from the organization. Former executive committeeman Bill Rhodes was unceremoniously booted from the Greenville GOP for “disloyalty” – namely refusing to support Graham’s candidacy. Two other executive committee members resigned from the party in protest of the way Rhodes was treated. Meanwhile another local Republican committeeman – Joshua Cook – was threatened...

Syrians are already asking why we’re bombing ISIS but not stopping Assad’s attacks on them. Good question. The airstrikes and other actions President Obama is taking against Islamic State deserve bipartisan support. They are beginning to degrade the terrorist group, also known as ISIS, but will not destroy it, for one reason above all: The administration still has no effective policy to remove Bashar Assad from power and end the conflict in Syria. Administration officials have called their approach “ISIS first.” As for Mr. Assad, in the words of Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the administration will...

South Carolina GOP Senator Lindsey Graham is thinking about running for president. Graham told The Weekly Standard in a lengthy interview that he isn’t crazy about other potential Republican candidates’ positions, and that he’s been encouraged by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to consider entering the race for the GOP presidential nomination. “I’ve strongly encouraged him to give it a look,” McCain told the Standard. “I think Lindsey has vast and deep experience on these issues that very few others have. I happen to like a lot of these guys—I like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie. Ted Cruz has gone out of...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said his experience passing an immigration bill with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) left him convinced his younger colleague isn't up to the presidency, in part because he's “so afraid of the right.” Graham made the comments to the Weekly Standard's Steven Hayes, and in the interview declared that he may run for president himself, saying he would want to inject his hawkish national security views into the debate. But his remarks about Rubio were perhaps more notable. Graham, for instance, compared Rubio's level of experience to President Obama's before taking offfice – albeit just before saying...

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) says he could be a presidential candidate in 2016. The outspoken two-term Senator, known as a foreign policy hawk, told the Weekly Standard that if the hawks aren't well-represented when the 2016 fields begin to solidify, he might throw his hat into the ring. ... When the Weekly Standard's Stephen F. Hayes asked Graham if he'd back a run by Sen. Marco Rubio, he took a shot at the Florida Republican whom he worked with on the Senate immigration bill. "He's a good guy, but after doing immigration with him - we don't need...

The hawkish Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says he is thinking about running for president in 2016. In an interview with Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, the senator, running for re-election to the Senate this year, said: “If I get through my general election, if nobody steps up in the presidential mix, if nobody’s out there talking — me and McCain have been talking — I may just jump in to get to make these arguments,” Graham said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham said President Obama’s plan in Syria “won’t even come close to defeating" the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. "It’s delusional," the South Carolina Republican said. Appearing on "Fox News Sunday" just after Obama’s chief of staff Denis McDonough, Graham said that “when the president and the president’s chief of staff says ‘we mean what we do and we do what we say,' no one believes that anymore. “There is no way in hell you can form an army on the ground in Syria to kill [the Islamic State] without a substantial American component ... “They’re pushing...

p>The Talk Shows September 14th, 2014 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): White House chief of staff Denis McDonough; Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C; Michael Hayden, a former CIA and National Security Agency director.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): McDonough; former Secretary of State James Baker; Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.FACE THE NATION (CBS): McDonough; Secretary of State John Kerry; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas.THIS WEEK (ABC): McDonough; Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; Education Secretary Arne Duncan.STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): McDonough; Harkin; Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; Rep. John...

Even the lamestream media now is having to admit that Obama has grossly overstepped his constitutional bounds as president, and grudgingly admitting that the House GOP's lawsuit against him has some merit, yet any organized attempt to investigate such constitutional abuses is being stifled. The Obama administration's IRS "loses" more and more essential E-mails about the pressuring of conservative groups-- a classic tactic of KGB thugs-- yet gets away with it. The administration's NSA digs up dirt on politicians to twist their arms, yet they get away with it. Then Obama's lackeys go so far as to in effect smuggle...

ANDERSON, S.C. - Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., "the son of Ronald Reagan when it comes to national security" Monday night at a barbecue gathering of nearly 1,000 conservatives in the upstate. South Carolina's senior senator also dubbed Rubio "a rising young star" in the GOP "who you will see a lot," a nod to his colleague's White House aspirations in 2016. The high praise comes from one of the Senate's biggest foreign policy hawks at a time when the country is confronting how to deal with the unraveling violence and chaos in Iraq being caused...

AFTER more than three years, almost 200,000 dead in Syria, the near collapse of Iraq, and the rise of the world’s most sinister terrorist army — the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which has conquered vast swaths of both countries — President Obama’s admission this week that “we don’t have a strategy yet” to deal with this threat is startling. It is also dangerous. The president clearly wants to move deliberately and consult with allies and Congress as he considers what to do about ISIS. No one disputes that goal. But the threat ISIS poses only grows over time....