Lindsey Graham Not Acting Like A Worried Man – But Maybe He Should Be

 Senator Lindsey Graham has a history of tacking to the right before the primary seasons of years he’s up for reelection. Oddly enough, we’re not seeing any of that behavior in him with 2014 on the horizon.

Jill Lawrence of National Journal wrote:

… now the South Carolina Republican is in the thick of bipartisantalks on immigration reforms that include a path to citizenship forillegal immigrants; making overtures on a fiscal “grand bargain” thatwould include higher taxes along with entitlement trims; and praisingPresident Obama for reaching out to him and others in his party. OnWednesday, Graham held a press conference to announce a bipartisan billto strengthen mental-health provisionsin gun background checks. He also attended Obama’s dinner party withRepublicans at a Washington hotel. In fact, Graham drew up the guestlist.

Then, demonstrating a truly shocking lack of political discernment, he joined his RINO in arms, John McCain to blast Rand Paul on the Senate floor, saying; “This idea that we’re going to use a drone to attack a citizen in a cafe in America is ridiculous.” 

In 2010, Graham’s pal John McCain tacked hard right to fend off atea-party challenger in Arizona. In 2012, Orrin Hatch did the same tosurvive in Utah. Graham could eventually back away from some of hisbipartisan projects, and some skeptical Democrats expect he will. Butfor now he is gambling that changing times and his own political skillswill keep him safe in 2014. And for now he is in a commanding positionin his party. Among self-identified Republicans and GOP-leaningindependents in a Winthrop University poll last month, he was at 71.6 percent approval.

Not surprisingly, no strong primary challenger to Graham has emerged.The antitax Club for Growth is keeping an eye on the race and willconsider getting involved if a viable candidate surfaces, says spokesmanBarney Keller. Graham scored 72 percent in the Club’s 2011 report card,close to what the group considers a “bottom-of-the-barrel” Republican.But he did better in 2012and “obviously you can’t beat someone with no one,” Keller says. GOPconsultants in the state predict Graham will have an opponent, butprobably a weak one.

I wouldn’t count on that. Graham’s tin eared antics on the Senate floor, yesterday, rankled grassroots conservatives mightily, and a blow-back of sorts has begun.

 Dustin Stockton of WesternPac and national organizer of Day of Resistance Rallies tweeted ‘considering catching a plane to SC and not leaving until we have a candidate to defeat@GrahamBlog #StandWithRand‘

There is a Primary Lindsey facebookpage dedicated to replacing the Senator in 2014 primary. Their missionstatement on the about page it simply says “Stop Lindsey” .  A googlesearch revealed that the domain called PrimaryGraham.com was purchased on March, 8th 2013.

I’m also hearing chatter that a Primary Lindsey SuperPAC is in the works –  something I think we’ll be hearing more about very soon.

Stay tuned.