Sen. Lindsey Graham stands at 0.5 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls in the Republican presidential race. He’s infinitesimally better — 0.7 percent — in the Iowa race, and 0.5 percent in New Hampshire. Even in his native South Carolina, where he might be assumed to have favorite-son status, Graham in languishing with 2.0 percent, in a three-way tie for seventh place.
It’s not exactly a position of strength, but in a half-comic, half-bitter performance Thursday before the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting in Washington, Graham presented himself as the candidate who, virtually alone in the race, knows the secret of winning the presidency.
Graham, one of 14 GOP candidates to appear before the group, spoke second, after Sen. Ted Cruz handled lead-off duties. Cruz had offered the crowd a familiar (and factually unsupported) interpretation of the 2012 presidential election in which Mitt Romney lost because millions of disaffected conservatives, particularly evangelical Christians, did not turn out to vote. The next Republican candidate needs to be a true conservative to lure those voters back to the polls, Cruz argued.
That set Graham off. Deciding on the spot to abandon plans to spend most of his time talking about foreign policy, Graham lectured the audience on the GOP’s recent presidential losses, explaining that — whatever the voters’ economic anxieties and policy blunders of the George W. Bush administration — Republicans have failed in recent cycles because they were on the wrong side of two key issues: immigration and abortion.
“Why do we lose?” Graham asked. “How many of you believe that we’re losing elections because we’re not hardass enough on immigration?”
There was an awkward silence in the room, and it’s not clear whether anyone agreed with Graham’s premise. But he continued: “Well, I don’t agree with you. I believe we’re losing the Hispanic vote because they think we don’t like them.”
The key to victory, Graham said, is to win those Hispanic voters, rather than chase some elusive conservatives. “I believe that it’s not about turning out evangelical Christians,” he explained. “It’s about repairing the damage done by incredibly hateful rhetoric driving a wall between us and the fastest-growing demographic in America.”
Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” was bad enough in 2012, Graham said, but now the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump has taken things a step further. “Forced deportation,” Graham said. “We’re literally going to round them up. Sound familiar to you?”
“You think we’re going to win an election with that kind of garbage?” Graham continued. “If you think it’s about turning out more people and staying on this path, then you’re setting this party up for oblivion. It’s not about turning out more people. It’s about getting more people involved in our cause.”
Graham’s remarks were not so much directed at Trump but at Cruz, who many Republicans feel has taken a hands-off approach to Trump in hopes of profiting politically. And of course, many of Cruz’s Republican colleagues in the Senate can’t stand him and are happy for any opportunity to take a whack at him.
Then it was on to abortion. “If the nominee of the Republican Party will not allow for an exception for rape and incest, they will not win,” Graham said. “Ted Cruz doesn’t have an exception for rape and incest.” If Cruz (and presumably other candidates who share that position) wins the nomination, Graham said, the election “will be about rape. It will be about the nominee of the Republican Party telling a woman who’s been raped you’ve got to carry the child of the rapist. Good luck with that.”
“We will lose young women in droves,” Graham said. Surveying it all, he said: “I am tired of that crap.”
The anger and bitterness behind Graham’s words were obvious to everyone in the quiet hall.
“Not the speech you thought you were gonna hear, right?” Graham said, breaking the tension. “Not the speech I thought I would give.”
Even if Graham were right about Cruz, even if he were right about immigration reform, and right about abortion — even if he were right about all of that, is there anything about Graham’s campaign so far that would indicate he could actually win the nomination and then defeat Hillary Clinton in a general election?
“Put me in the ring with her,” Graham said. “Give me a chance. I’ll win.”
Finally, though, Graham acknowledged reality. The plan hasn’t worked, and Graham’s real hope was that someone in the crowd of donors would be generous enough to allow him to keep going in the absence of voter support.
“I’m at one percent,” Graham said. “The election is still a long way away. Help me stay in this race.”
Given the circumstances, it would be reasonable for any Republican to respond by asking: Why?
