Lindsey Graham: GOP may have to rally around Ted Cruz

The Hill ^ | 3/1/2016 | Harper Neidig

[lodi90]

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says the Republican Party may be forced to support presidential hopeful Ted Cruz in order to stop front-runner Donald Trump.

"You know Ted Cruz is not my favorite, by any means,” Graham, who dropped his own bid for the White House in December, said in an interview with CBS. “But we may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump, and I'm not so sure that would work.” His comments came with Super Tuesday results indicating Trump would win as many as eight states. They also came a week after Graham joked, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you.”

Graham has been a tough critic of both Trump or Cruz. He once said that choosing between the two would be "like being shot or poisoned. I think you get the same result, whether it's quick or it takes a long time."

[Paul R.]

In 2012, Planned Parenthood performed almost 11 million “services”: Pap smears, HIV testing, breast exams, you name it, including 327,166 abortions. Yes, we COULD ramp up local public clinics and such to handle the additional 10.5 million-plus services outside of abortions, but, that’d take some doing. In some places, IL for example, state funded services are under extreme budget pressure. So, then what? Block grants to build more clinics? Set up a network of temporary (yeah, right) Federal clinics? Our Fed-Gov. will have it’s hands full straightening out the VA, alone.

This is not to mention that the vast majority of voters might accept defunding of PP if PP won’t stop offering abortions, but there’s just no way they’ll accept closing down PP unilaterally. Letting PP make the choice of receiving Federal funding OR offering abortion services is politically possible. Not giving them that choice and ending their Federal funding is not politically possible. Whoever the Pub Presidential candidate is who’d pursue the latter course would lose by 15-20 points, and the Senate would go at least 5 up by the Dems.

IMO, get this victory (end public funding of abortions via PP) while we can - it’s a huge one, and then the abortion issue can be pursued separately from general womens’ health issues.

[mabelkitty]

Perfect.