When it came to the issue of foreign policy, there was something odd about the 2008 Republican presidential debates. Most of the talk was about the war in Iraq, but there wasn’t much to debate because most of the candidates agreed with each other about what U.S. policy should be. (They favored the surge of troops that ultimately rescued a failing war effort).
The conformity was so great that Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who wanted to showcase his record on domestic issues like health care, openly expressed frustration. “Among the Republican candidates, there’s really very little separation about Iraq, with the exception of Ron Paul … and yet, we still go back through it over and over and over again, and I just never quite understood why we continued to plow the same ground,” Huckabee complained during an interview in Iowa in the summer of 2007.
Now, as the 2016 race begins, Republicans could be headed for another campaign in which war in Iraq — this time, the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — is a major subject of the party’s debates, even as the candidates basically agree with each other, with the exception of the one named Paul.
Putting Sen. Rand Paul’s views aside, the issue among Republicans will be less what to do about the Islamic State — they’ll all agree on an aggressive response — as who has the experience and competence to get the job done. And that’s where the possible candidacy of Sen. Lindsey Graham comes in.
The newly re-elected, third-term South Carolina senator announced in late January that he has formed a political action committee, “Security Through Strength,” to “test the waters” for a 2016 run. Graham’s Facebook announcement suggested his top concern will be the war against radical Islam.
“Ronald Reagan’s policy of ‘Peace Through Strength’ kept America safe during the Cold War,” Graham wrote. “But we will never enjoy peaceful coexistence with radical Islam because its followers are committed to destroying us and our way of life. However, America can have ‘Security Through Strength,’ and I will continue to lead in that critical fight.”
The idea behind Graham’s run is not that other Republican candidates don’t oppose the Islamic State — of course they do — it’s that, as governors or relatively junior senators, they don’t have Graham’s fluency with the issues or experience dealing with foreign policy questions. That’s essentially the same rationale another senior Republican foreign policy hand, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, is using as he explores a 2016 run.
But Graham’s candidacy would be unique, not because he would be running to make a point but because he is from a critical early-primary state. The South Carolina primary plays a crucial part in the Republican presidential nomination process. State officials zealously guard their position as the “First in the South” contest, and the primary is the first expression of what voters in the GOP’s strongest region are thinking.
From 1980 through 2008, South Carolina primary voters chose the candidate who ended up winning the GOP nomination every single time, giving rise to a favorite local expression: “We pick presidents.” But that streak came to an end in 2012 when the state’s GOP voters chose Newt Gingrich. South Carolina politicos worried that diminished the state’s influence; certainly the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, didn’t owe anything to South Carolina.
Now, a Graham run could further complicate the South Carolina picture. If the state’s Republican voters support a favorite son who has no chance of winning nationwide, they could again see themselves reduced to an irrelevancy in the nominating process.
Something similar happened to Iowa in 1992, when Sen. Tom Harkin ran in and won the Democratic caucuses. Harkin lost almost everything else and dropped out of the race — meaning Iowa Democrats had very little influence in picking the party’s nominee.
Now, a new poll by NBC News and Marist finds Graham leading the race in South Carolina, with 17 percent to Jeb Bush’s 15 percent and Scott Walker’s 12 percent. But Graham’s popularity does not extend to other key states. In Iowa, Graham is in 11th place, with the support of one percent of Republican voters. He’s also at one percent in New Hampshire. So his candidacy, should there be one, is at the moment just a South Carolina thing.
And that’s an issue for some home-state Republicans. “I think Graham has serious problems winning South Carolina,” says Clemson University political scientist David Woodard. “When given other options, I think the base GOP voters will go away from him. I don’t see him being the favorite son Harkin was to the Democrats in 1992.”
Indeed, there are signs a Graham candidacy is a complication South Carolinians view with skepticism. When the NBC-Marist pollsters asked whether South Carolinians think Graham should run for president in 2016, they found that 58 percent of registered voters said no, versus 35 percent who said yes.
So if Graham decides to go ahead, South Carolina will face a 2016 dilemma: support a native son or play a possibly decisive role in the Republican nominating process. With memories of the 2012 primary still very much in mind, the state’s voters might choose to preserve their own influence rather than support one of their own. “Remember, South Carolina likes to say, ‘We pick presidents,'” says David Woodard. “They didn’t get it right in 2012 — and they want to make up for past mistakes now.”
