Tag: lindsay graham
Having A Laugh At Walker's Big Promoters, Sean Hannity And Lindsay Graham

Having A Laugh At Walker's Big Promoters, Sean Hannity And Lindsay Graham

Fox News host Sean Hannity pulled former NFL star Herschel Walker into the race for U.S. Senate in Georgia, served as his campaign’s biggest asset, and bears responsibility for Republicans ultimately failing to oust Sen. Raphael Warnock, who beat Walker in Tuesday’s runoff.

Walker’s loss is another embarrassing defeat for Fox. The network’s influential prime-time hosts heavily promoted four unorthodox first-time candidates for U.S. Senate in the midterm elections — Walker, Blake Masters in Arizona, Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, and J.D. Vance in Ohio — helping them secure the Republican nominations for those races. Vance, the sole victor of the group, ran well behind the rest of his party’s slate in a red state; the other three lost winnable races in swing states, ensuring historic Democratic victories rather than a GOP “red tsunami.”

Hannity is a GOP kingmaker with the ear of top party leaders who spent Donald Trump’s presidency advising the White House. He is a relentless propagandist whose singular goal is electing Republican candidates. But when Hannity gets to pick those candidates, the results can be disastrous for his party.

For the last month, Hannity has been laser-focused on helping Walker to victory in the Georgia runoff. The Fox host has preached the importance of the race to his viewers, shielded the candidate from criticism, promoted his political ads, bolstered his fundraising, and savaged his opponent.

Walker has been a fixture on Hannity’s program even as he has hidden from credible journalists. Of Walker’s 12 weekday appearances on Fox since Election Day, five came on the host’s show — often, bizarrely, accompanied by Hannity regular Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). The odd couple returned to the program on the eve of the runoff, with Graham using the opportunity to thank Hannity’s audience for their donations and promising them “a return on investment tomorrow.”

It didn’t turn out that way. And Hannity, who was Walker’s most important press supporter throughout the race, is a big part of the reason why Democrats will have 51 seats in the Senate rather than 50 when it convenes in 2023.

Walker’s introduction to Republican politics came as a regular on Hannity’s show during the 2020 election cycle, when his pro-Trump takes made him a MAGA sensation. Then, after Trump lost and Hannity turned his attention to the 2022 midterms, the Fox host recruited Walker to run against Warnock. In a series of interviews, Hannity urged Walker to seek the Senate seat and pushed other Republicans to support his candidacy.

GOP leaders knew from the start that Walker was a terrible candidate whose nomination would make it harder to win the seat. As I noted on the day he announced his candidacy:

Republicans have plenty of reasons to worry about Walker’s chances of winning a general election in a swing state: He’s a first-time candidate who is moving to the state for the race, he’s a conspiracy theorist, and his wife is currently under investigation by state authorities for allegedly illegally voting in Georgia while living in Texas.

And last month, The Associated Press revealed that the candidate has “repeatedly threatened his ex-wife’s life, exaggerated claims of financial success and alarmed business associates with unpredictable behavior.”

Hannity endorsed Walker on-air that very night, and his show became ground zero for the campaign. The candidate made 38 weekday Fox News appearances between his August 25, 2021, launch date and Election Day; 19 of them came on Hannity, including a purported town hall that was functionally a televised rally for Walker. With Trump and Fox both behind Walker, the Georgia primary field cleared for him.

But as Hannity was propping up Walker’s candidacy, GOP fears that he hadn’t been fully vetted were being proved correct. Journalists detailed Walker’s history of domestic violence, his previously unrevealed children, reports that he had paid for abortions, his involvement in scams, and his false claims about his academic, business, and military background.

On Election Day, Republicans won every statewide election in Georgia with at least 51% of the vote — except for the Senate race. There, Warnock secured a narrow lead that threw the race into a runoff, which he ultimately won.

Walker’s defeat makes his campaign the latest case study to demonstrate the limits of Fox’s influence. Its hosts can get their chosen candidates through the party’s primaries. But the toxic extremists who attract Fox stars' interest are often deeply alienating to normal people, and that is making it harder for the GOP to win elections. Meanwhile, the Fox personalities who wield the most influence over the party are pointing fingers at everyone but themselves.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Right-Wing Pundits Warn Graham: Don't Push Abortion Ban Before Midterm

Right-Wing Pundits Warn Graham: Don't Push Abortion Ban Before Midterm

Prominent right-wing commentators are condemning Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) proposed national abortion ban. But their concern isn’t that they oppose threatening doctors with up to five years in prison if they perform an abortion on a patient who has been pregnant for more than 15 weeks. It’s that they know Graham’s bill endangers the GOP’s chances of gaining power and thus having the opportunity to ban abortions.

Graham’s proposal, announced Tuesday, would implement a nationwide ceiling on abortion, banning abortions across the country after 15 weeks of pregnancy, while leaving in place all stricter state laws. He told reporters at a press conference announcing the bill, “If we take back the House and the Senate, I can assure you we'll have a vote on our bill.”

The Republican Party’s platform states that “the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed,” and since GOP appointees to the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, red states have implemented sweeping abortion restrictions and in some cases near-total bans.

But some Republican leaders are trying to distance the party from Graham’s legislation, apparently fearing an electoral backlash that could swamp GOP efforts to take back the U.S. House and Senate. Fox News is largely ignoring the bill for the same reason. And some on the right are explicitly slamming Graham on those grounds.

“He wants Republicans to lose. This is sabotage,” Daily Wire host Matt Walsh argued on Wednesday.

On his own podcast, Charlie Kirk called Graham’s move “election interference,” saying that Democrats are “enthusiastic that Lindsey Graham is now making this all about the one issue Democrats actually can win suburban women on.”

And Fox’s Jesse Watters questioned the “timing” of the move during an interview with the South Carolina senator, telling him, “All the media and the Democrats are talking about federal abortion ban, federal abortion ban. You know that's not smart politics, right?”

Note that none of these right-wingers oppose federal abortion bans on the merits. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe, Walsh tweeted that “federal ban on abortion nationwide is the next step.” During his interview with Graham, Watters stressed that he agreed with the senator on the merits of the policy, just not the timing. And Kirk claimed during his anti-Graham rant that “as someone who is so pro-life, I would love a total abortion ban, 15 weeks is not enough.”

“But I’m also not dumb,” he alleged, adding that Graham had proposed his bill “25 days out from ballots going out.”

And there’s the rub.

The right wants abortion bans like the one Graham put forward. But its propagandists know that such bans are extremely unpopular, and that Republicans are better off keeping the public’s focus on issues like crime, where the GOP has plenty of grievances but no solutions. Then, if the GOP takes back Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024, its leaders can ram through its traditional and unpopular priorities like banning abortions, cutting taxes for the wealthy, and slashing the social safety net.

The biggest threat to Republican political victories is letting the public find out what the party would do if it wins, and the party’s media allies are well aware.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

'There Could Be Peril': Graham Advised Trump To Ditch January 6 Press Event

'There Could Be Peril': Graham Advised Trump To Ditch January 6 Press Event

Former President Donald Trump planned to hold a press conference in Florida, his adopted state, on the one-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021 insurrection. But Trump, according to Associated Press reporter Jill Colvin, canceled that event and will instead “be discussing his grievances” at a rally in Arizona in mid-January.

“Trump continues to falsely insist the election was ‘stolen’ and that the ‘real’ insurrection was on Election Day, November 3, 2020, the day Democrat Joe Biden won the votes that led to his 306-232 Electoral College victory,” Colvin notes. “Federal and state election officials, Trump’s own attorney general and numerous judges — including some he appointed — have all said repeatedly that the election was fair and that there is no credible evidence of serious fraud.”

In an official statement released on Tuesday night, January 4, Trump wrote, “In light of the total bias and dishonesty of the January 6th Unselect Committee of Democrats, two failed Republicans, and the Fake News Media, I am canceling the January 6th Press Conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, and instead will discuss many of those important topics at my rally on Saturday, January 15th, in Arizona.”

One Republican ally who urged Trump to cancel the press conference he had in mind for January 6 was Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The conservative senator told Axios he advised Trump that “there could be peril in doing a news conference” and that it was “best to focus on election reform instead.”

Axios’ Jonathan Swan notes that Fox News’ Laura Ingraham also advised Trump against going forward with a January 6 event.

Swan reports, “House and Senate leaders had no involvement in planning Trump's event — which they viewed as a political headache. They were quietly relieved when they saw his statement Tuesday evening announcing he was canceling the press conference. The withdrawal leaves Steve Bannon and Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) as perhaps the only high-profile Trump allies willing to go on the offense through media appearances Thursday.”

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Willing To Oppose Trump, Some Senate Republicans Gain Leverage

Willing To Oppose Trump, Some Senate Republicans Gain Leverage

By Ginger Gibson and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It is no surprise that Democrats in the U.S. Congress will oppose Donald Trump but the most important resistance to fulfilling the president-elect’s agenda is beginning to emerge from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

A small number of influential Republicans in the Senate are threatening to block appointments to Trump’s administration, freeze his thaw with Russia, and prevent the planned wall on the border with Mexico.

The party held onto control of the Senate at the Nov. 8 election but by only a thin margin, putting powerful swing votes in just a few hands.

That empowers Republican Senate mavericks such as Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas. Both were bitter rivals to Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.

Paul, a libertarian lone wolf, says he will block Senate confirmations if Trump nominates either former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton to be secretary of state.

South Carolina’s Lindsay Graham has started publicly outlining places he might be willing to oppose Trump. He is against the Mexican border wall and is delivering warnings against Trump’s intention to revoke legal status for undocumented immigrants brought here as children – although that would not require congressional approval.

Graham, a traditional Republican foreign policy hawk, strongly disagrees with Trump’s attempt to improve ties with Russia.

“I am going to be kind of a hard ass” on Russia, Graham told reporters recently. “We can’t sit on the sidelines” and let cyber attacks blamed on Russia “go unanswered.”

The early stirrings of opposition from Senate Republicans are a sign that the New York businessman, who has never held public office, might run into harsh political realities soon after taking office on Jan. 20.

Other Senators who might defy Trump are Arizona’s John McCain and Jeff Flake, Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, Florida’s Marco Rubio, Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, said senior Senate aides and lawmakers.

These lawmakers have ruffled feathers in the past and some have a good political reason not to fear Trump: Paul, McCain, Murkowski and Rubio do not have to run for reelection until 2022. Graham, Collins and Sasse will have to face the voters in 2020; Cruz and Flake have an earlier election, in 2018.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose job is to keep the Republicans in line, knows the challenges ahead. A senior Republican aide said McConnell is “loathe” to spend time trying to move bills that lack the needed Senate votes.

McConnell is aware he will not have the support of some of his own lawmakers on bills that could pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, such as appropriating money to build the Mexican wall and further abortion restrictions, the aide said.

DEMOCRATIC STRAYS

But Trump has a history of taming what appear to be well-entrenched Republican opponents. He won the party nomination against all the odds and some of his staunchest opponents like Rubio and Cruz ended up endorsing him.

And swing votes in the Senate cut two ways. The Democrats have their own potential renegades such as West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who has already declared his support for Trump’s nomination of Republican Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general.

Such swings by Democrats toward Republicans may be likelier ahead of the 2018 elections, when Democrats must defend more vulnerable Senate seats than Republicans. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer must deal with this. Trump said over the weekend he and Schumer “always had a good relationship.”

Republicans are likely to control only 52 seats in the 100-seat Senate, meaning three defections within the party are enough to block cabinet appointments which only require 50 votes. Vice President-elect Mike Pence would break 50-50 ties.

The task for McConnell gets more difficult when it comes to passing legislation, which requires 60 votes, known as cloture, to allow a bill to move forward. If Trump plans to sign a bill while in office, perhaps one that will change immigration law or restrict abortions, McConnell will have to keep all Republicans in line and win over an additional eight Democrats.

Trump could deliver on campaign promises that do not require legislative approval like blocking the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal or ending the Iran nuclear pact. The repeal of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, enjoys robust Republican support and would be done through a legislative maneuver that does not require any Democratic support.

Collins and Murkowski have a history of crossing the aisle to join Democrats and could shy from abortion restrictions.

Cruz has never feared disrupting Senate business to prove a point or seek concessions in legislation.

Sasse did not waver from his staunch criticism of Trump through the campaign. Flake has said he is “eating crow” after Trump’s win, but he could defect on immigration and border security, issues he has previously joined with Democrats on.

Paul was asked last week on MSNBC if he would put a hold on Giuliani or Bolton. In the Senate, a hold allows a single senator to delay a confirmation. He left open the possibility of such a move, saying, “I feel pretty strongly about it.”

He said: “We have a 52-48 majority, all it would take is two or three Republicans to say they can’t go along with Giuliani and can’t go along with Bolton.”

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson and Richard Cowan; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Alistair Bell)

IMAGE: U.S. Republican presidential candidate and Senator Rand Paul speaks during the Heritage Action for America presidential candidate forum in Greenville, South Carolina on September 18, 2015. REUTERS/Chris Keane