I’ll say this for Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He says some stunning things. Some of them knock you insensate because they’re so stupid and others render you semi-conscious because you can’t believe that a politician actually said them.
About The Author

BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
He is just trying to uphold a long tradition of bigotry in the South Carolina Senatorial tradition.
What he says is bad enough but the real brain burner is just think of all of those that voted for him and still will!!! What a way to waste taxpayers money.
It’s hard to be coherent when you are shit-faced.
You mean he’s Boehner’s drinking buddy?
He must have hated studying algebra in school.
Require them to solve a quadratic equation as a condition of office, and Congress would empty out.
Yeah, I’m sure they hated algebra, almost as much as they feared it.
It’s sickening that Graham believes that crap, and even more sickening that he has devout followers who continue to vote for him. The man is a complete asshole. Shame on South Carolina for supporting him.
I don’t buy that he believes half the shit he’s spewing for a nano second. I get what he’s doing, I don’t agree with it, but I get it.
Graham is not stating facts. He knows this, the reporters know this, his target audience knows this, and we know this. Trying to debate on the factual level is worthless here.
What he’s doing is crafting a narrative, and plugging various real world items into the narrative to tie into peoples day to day lives. It’s the story of the world, with Christian American’s as the real hero. The noble, moral, honorable, American Christian struggling against a violent and sinful world to preserve Christianity, Capitalism, and The West. He’s just plugging in real life events where they see it.
It’s sociopathic, cynical, and manipulative, but it works.
He’s not the only one who does this, he just tends to mix in monsters with his nighttime fairy tales more than most.
Pitching technocratic solutions to pig ignorant flyover hicks does not work. You need a clear narrative, good and evil must be obvious, there can be no gray areas, it has to be told like an epic story, and you need to go for the gut (not the brain). This is what he’s doing it.
Frankly our side just isn’t equipped for it. We’d get in trouble with any group we tried to demonize. We’re too PC and unable to choose between social liberalism and populism. Until we are willing to pick and choose one (ie, either give up any pretenses of the new deal and side with the major business in our blue cities and rat fuck flyover into the ground economically and demonize them. Or give up social cosmopolitan values and demonize the elite as godless race baiters who fuck prostitutes and snort blow day in and day out while ruining the economy and our culture from their NYC and DC offices, and they hate working Americans.) and utterly savage the other this tactic is off the table for us.
I don’t like it either, but I don’t like it because it works for them and doesn’t work as well for us. It’s a sour grapes deal. Though if it did work for us, I’d have no problem using it and I’d grow a big rubbery one watching them bitch about us using it. Just like I don’t believe all Republicans are racist homophobes, but I’ll make that claim at any chance I can when I know one is in the room.
Lindsay Graham only started this stupid talking after the GOP move so far from where he was. He is grandstanding — and not very well at that. This kind of talk is not his natural environment.
This is certainly the turf where progressives/liberals find it hard to gain a footing, simply because, in general, we are not craven or opportunistic enough to exploit people whose whose motivations stem from largely within the lizard portions of their brains.
What he is doing is simply appealing to the basest instincts of his constituents, who largely view the world through a very simple, almost binary, lens. There is no nuance. There is no gray area. There is simply no room for even a contemplative moment as to the veracity of anything he is spouting.
At its core, it is really no different than the kinds of appeals that got these folks to ham it up for the cameras in the early 20th century. The same kinds of emotions are at play.
Here is where public sentiment in South Carolina is moving among the established Republicans.
Our American Revival
This is who Lindsay Graham is having to riff off of.
This week is “petition for Israel” “kill the deal with Iran’ week.
Watch this. Not Lindsay Graham. If South Carolina Republicans don’t rally behind him as a favorite son, he’s not going anywhere. The inroads of Our American Revival — which seems to be pitching to Christianists is IMO telling about the direction SC GOP voters are moving. And it also is playing on serious anti-union sentiment left over from over 70 years ago.
Not to mention an eagerness to do in 2016 to Democrats what they did in 2014.
This seems to be where the Koch money is going to go. Likely lately they have been auditioning the second slot.
You are aware the Saudi royal family last name is Al Saud. He might consider burning Korans as this will complete his bridge burning.
You mean Al-Qur’an? Guess he also hates Allah, who looks into his wicked heart and knows all his secrets, huh? and al dente pasta in a Beirut restaurant.
Calling Al Haig!
William Rivers Pitt – How To Run For President For Fun and Profit
If Newt has another book to hawk, he’d be back running again.
Loved the Al-abama comment.
Louis Goehmert on Obama’s martial law in Texas.
Another one that needs to be contacted by his local DHS Fusion Center.