Just a Little Lie
Let’s just get this out in the open: Senator Lindsey Graham(R-SC) is a liar. On Friday, when the Senate voted on whether to end debate on the House continuing resolution, that was the ball-game. Once the number of Senators needed to amend the bill had been reduced from sixty-one to fifty-one, Reid was free to strip the de-funding language from the bill. Senator Lindsey Graham(R-SC) was among the twenty-five Republican sell-outs who voted to permit Harry Reid to do so. In tweets and in an official news release, Senator Graham subsequently claimed to have voted against funding for Obama-care, when that can be true only if you ignore the first vote for cloture. The simple truth is that Lindsey Graham enabled Harry Reid to modify the bill. Now he claims to be for de-funding Obama-care. This half-truth is really a whole lie, but he will seek cover behind the latter vote. He’s busily telling his constituents that he’s opposed to Obama-care, and that he voted to de-fund it, but he’s lying through his teeth, using the procedural nuances of the United States Senate as political camouflage. Graham’s constituents need only ask him one direct question:
“Would Harry Reid have been able to amend the House continuing resolution without the support of Republicans, like you, Senator Graham?”
The true answer, indeed the only answer to this question is “no.” Anything else is an attempt to obfuscate, evade, and otherwise obscure the truth.
Here had been his tweet, just moments after the vote:
Lindsey Graham is a despicable liar. He’s hoping that the old formulation of being “for it before he was against it” will be enough to get him past his next re-election campaign, but voters of South Carolina should know that he’s lying to them, and that they now have an option. Graham is being challenged in the primaries, and it’s about time somebody holds his feet to the fire. What he’s done in the US Senate has been despicable. His lies, misrepresentations, and his unflagging support of statism have earned him an involuntary early retirement from the US Senate. It’s now up to the people of South Carolina to deliver it.
Lindsey Graham had hoped to do what twenty-four of his fellow Senate Republicans had hoped to do: Deceive voters with a shell-game. Vote for cloture, permitting the bill to be amended, followed by a vote against the amendment, as the means by which to pretend he had voted to de-fund Obama-care. The simple fact is what it is, and lying, duplicitous, back-stabbing politicians hope to trick voters with this sort of thing. It’s really just a slightly different formulation of John Kerry’s infamous “for it before I was against it” nonsense of the 2004 campaign. It’s always the same. Graham isn’t listening to the people of South Carolina, and he’s gambling that most of them aren’t paying much attention, or will be fooled by this procedural dodge.
He may get away with it if the people of South Carolina don’t take the time to examine what he’s done, but he won’t get away with it here: Senator Lindsey Graham is lying when he claims to have voted to de-fund Obama-care as his previous vote enabled Harry Reid to remove the de-funding language. This sort of behavior has become increasingly common from Senator Graham, who has supported going to war in Libya, and who has remained one of the key drivers in the Senate for the amnesty bill, leading many to refer to him simply as “Grahamnesty.” Whatever else he is, he’s neither honest, nor conservative, and it’s time he was sent home for good. Most politicians can be found to have told a whopper or two during their careers, but Graham along with the others who are pretending to have voted against funding Obama-care after enabling it to go forward are simply liars.
Editor’s note: Senator Graham is being challenged in the GOP Senate primary by Nancy Mace, who is trying to overcome the Senator in a bid to replace him in the Senate. She may represent exactly what South Carolina needs in order to get beyond Graham’s duplicitous career in which he says one thing before voters in South Carolina, and another thing while in Washington DC. As you might guess, she has a few thoughts on Senator Graham, here.
