July 1, 2010: Republican Senator: Tea Party Will ‘Die Out’ because It Is ‘Unsustainable’ and Lacks ‘Coherent Vision for Governing the Country’

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) explains his lack of affection for the far-right “tea party” movement that currently wields great influence in the Republican Party. The tea party organizations, he says, deride him for being willing to work with Democrats on selected issues. Some accuse him of being a closet homosexual, with at least one organization accusing him of submitting to “blackmail” by the Obama administration and doing the White House’s legislative bidding in return for Obama administration members keeping quiet about his alleged homosexuality (see April 20, 2010). Tea party organizations such as Resist.net have lambasted Graham for indulging in what it calls “his old reach-across-the-aisle tricks again,” and South Carolina gubernatorial nominee Nikki Haley (R-SC), a tea party favorite, considers Graham a traitor to the Republican Party. Graham says, “Everything I’m doing now in terms of talking about climate, talking about immigration, talking about Gitmo [the Guantanamo Bay detention facility] is completely opposite of where the tea party movement’s at.” He recalls earlier contentious meetings with tea party leaders and says that during one meeting, he challenged the leaders by asking: “What do you want to do? You take back your country—and do what with it?” The response, Graham says: “Everybody went from being kind of hostile to just dead silent.” Of the tea party movement itself, Graham has said that “[i]t will die out” because “it’s just unsustainable… they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country.” Now, Graham adds: “We don’t have a lot of Reagan-type leaders in our party. Remember Ronald Reagan Democrats? I want a Republican that can attract Democrats.… Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today.” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says of Graham: “He’s willing to work on more things than the others. Lindsey, to his credit, has a small-government vision that’s out of fashion with his party, which stands for no government.… He’s one of the last big voices to give that vision intellectual energy.” Graham has earned a rating of 90 (out of a possible 100) from the American Conservative Union for his conservative views and legislative votes, though the anti-tax Club for Growth calls him the “worst” Republican in the Senate. New York Times reporter Robert Draper believes that Graham has brought much of the derision from the tea party onto himself by saying good things about President Obama, including characterizing him as “a good role model” and “an American just as much as anybody else.” His worst sin, Draper writes, may be his “willingness—even eagerness—to seek common ground with Democrats.” Conservative talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck routinely mock and vilify Graham, while conservative bloggers routinely vow that his alleged homosexuality drives his willingness to work with Democrats. (On that subject, Graham tells Draper with a “smirk”: “Like maybe I’m having a clandestine affair with [openly gay singer] Ricky Martin. I know it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men—I’m sure hundreds of ‘em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge—but I ain’t available. I ain’t gay. Sorry.”) Unlike most tea partiers, Graham wants to save Social Security instead of transforming it into a private, voucher-driven entity; prosecute terrorists under civil as well as military law; implement immigration law reform that would allow “illegal immigrants” a pathway towards citizenship; and other positions that they do not support. His admiration for slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the recently deceased Senate Democrat Ted Kennedy are other positions Graham holds that sets him apart from most tea party members, as does the occasional complement bestowed upon him by Emanuel or other White House members. [New York Times, 7/1/2010]