The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion A new ad makes the case against Lindsey Graham with Graham doing all the talking

Columnist|
May 22, 2020 at 6:30 a.m. EDT
A new super PAC formed by Democratic operatives to defeat Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has released an ad attacking Graham's support for President Trump. (Video: Lindsey Must Go)

When I interviewed Jaime Harrison, the former chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party now running against Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), he told me about a campaign event he did in a county that gave 61 percent of its vote to President Trump in 2016. What happened there surprised him.

“I walk in the room and they stand up and they start clapping and they start chanting, ‘Send Lindsey home! Send Lindsey home!’,” Harrison recounted when we talked in February. “And a number of them come up to me afterwards and they say, ‘You know, I don’t know what has happened to Lindsey Graham.’” Harrison thinks he knows what happened.

“Here’s a guy that many of us had tremendous respect for. Because when John McCain was alive, we thought in the end of the day he would do the right thing for either the state or the nation when the rubber met the road,” Harrison explained as he invoked the name of Graham’s best friend, the Arizona senator who died in 2018. “But what we have now seen is that this guy’s only interest is in Lindsey O. Graham. His only interest is being in the middle of things, to have power.”

A new ad out today from LindseyMustGoPAC, a super PAC with an obvious objective, uses the three-term senator’s own words to dramatize what happened to Graham in an effort to destroy his credibility and sow doubts about his character.

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The “Lindsey Must Go” ad spends 81 seconds pummeling Graham with his greatest hits against and then for Trump. For instance, in one breath, you hear Graham moan in a 2015 interview, “Every time I turn around I’m being asked about Donald Trump saying one dumb thing or another. And I’m tired of it.” Then, in the next clip from a 2018 interview, you watch Graham earnestly say, “President Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and then some.”

“Lindsey Graham has done both the impossible and the unthinkable: He went from being the late John McCain’s best friend to Donald Trump’s best friend,” said Jimmy Williams, senior adviser to LindseyMustGoPAC. “We’re simply tired of his snarling, revengeful, dirty payback politics down here and I promise you we will do whatever we legally can to make his last nine months in the U.S. Senate a miserable hell.”

Super PACs can’t coordinate with campaigns. But this new ad will certainly help Harrison, given what he told me during our February interview about what South Carolina voters value.

“They know character matters here in this state. This is a values-based state. That’s what motivates people, values. And character is a huge part of that,” Harrison said. “We believe that we can make the case that Lindsey Graham has been a failure to South Carolina. And it’s time to upgrade.”

That “Lindsey Must Go” ad makes the case better than anyone else could — especially since Graham does all the talking.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @Capehartj. Subscribe to Cape Up, Jonathan Capehart’s weekly podcast.

Read more:

Jonathan Capehart: The deplorable hypocrisy of Lindsey Graham and the Republican Party

Jennifer Rubin: Don’t worry, Sen. Graham. No one thought you’d be fair.

Greg Sargent: Lindsey Graham’s Iowa deception shows Trump’s corruption of GOP