Can anyone figure out what Graham is up to?
The comments section in this entry includes a reader’s theory (plausible to me) on why Graham was seeking to delay or avoid a debate and vote on an amnesty bill this year, plus a discussion about immigration activist William Gheen’s charge that Graham is a homosexual. In the discussion, I completely reject Gheen’s proferred rationale for his exposure of Graham’s private life.
Update: See also Kathlene M.’s comment. She says that Graham’s reasons are not mysterious and that they make sense.
Here is one of the strangest
stories I’ve ever seen coming out of Congress. I cannot begin to lay out the numerous puzzles and contradictions raised by Sen. Lindsey Graham’s announcement that he is
ceasing his support for a Cap and Trade bill because the Democratic leadership wants to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform (i.e., legalization of illegals, plus a huge increase in legals). Graham is of course an all-out, McCain-like champion of comprehensive immigration reform; yet now he’s so
upset that comprehensive immigration reform is being moved to the front of the legislative line that he’s
withdrawing his support for an unrelated bill? It’s too bizarre for words. And the below story, while reasonably well written, doesn’t explain it at all.
TRENDING: Graham move imperils Obama agenda
Posted: April 24th, 2010 04:05 PM ET
From CNN’s Dana Bash and Ed Henry
(CNN)—In a stunning move that could throw a major roadblock in front of two of President Obama’s biggest legislative initiatives, Sen. Lindsey Graham abruptly declared Saturday he’s abandoning talks on climate change legislation because he believes Democratic efforts to bring up a separate immigration reform package is undermining the legislative process.
“Moving forward on immigration—in this hurried, panicked manner—is nothing more than a cynical political ploy,” the South Carolina Republican wrote in a sharply-worded letter obtained by CNN.
The letter was sent to business, religious, and conservation leaders that the senator has been working with on the climate change legislation. An aide to Graham told CNN the senator will no longer be attending a major news conference scheduled for Monday with Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to unveil details of their “tri-partisan” climate change legislation.
Graham is the only leading Republican who has been working with the White House on the contentious issue.
A senior White House official told CNN that in recent days Graham has been privately threatening that he would abandon the climate talks unless Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, backed off of plans to push forward with comprehensive immigration reform ahead of the environmental legislation.
Reid released a statement Saturday saying he’s still committed to tackling both issues and will not be deterred by Graham’s decision.
“I appreciate the work of Senator Graham on both of these issues and understand the tremendous pressure he is under from members of his own party not to work with us on either measure,” said Reid. “But I will not allow him to play one issue off of another, and neither will the American people. They expect us to do both, and they will not accept the notion that trying to act on one is an excuse for not acting on the other.”
An aide said Graham was involved in a “flurry” of talks in the last 48 hours with Kerry and Lieberman and in those conversations nobody disabused the Republican of—as CNN reported Friday—the fact that Senate Democrats have changed course and will now move immigration ahead of climate change on the legislative calendar in the coming weeks. CNN reported Friday that climate change is now unlikely to even make it to the Senate floor at all this year.
Graham’s decision to release the letter allowed the private negotiations to spill into the public, and administration officials acknowledge it now could be much harder for Obama to get bipartisan consensus on both issues that are key to his agenda.
In his letter, Graham blasted the Democratic plans to move immigration reform ahead of climate change legislation: “Let’s be clear, a phony, political effort on immigration today accomplishes nothing but making it exponentially more difficult to address in a serious, comprehensive manner in the future”
“Unless their plan substantially changes this weekend, I will be unable to move forward on energy independence legislation at this time. I will not allow our hard work to be rolled out in a manner that has no chance of success,” he added.
But a senior Democratic source involved in the climate change talks fired back that “the only thing ‘phony’ here is Lindsay Graham” because he’s pulling out amid pressure from fellow Republicans to block Obama’s agenda.
This is also an about-face on immigration reform for Graham because he has been pressing the White House to move forward on comprehensive reform on that issue as well. His move comes just one day after Obama called on both parties to pass immigration reform on the federal level in response to a new law in Arizona that will allow local police to stop individuals suspected of being illegal immigrants.
Democrats privately charged Saturday that Graham was trying to scuttle immigration reform in order to protect his close friend, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, from having to deal with a sticky issue in advance of his tough August GOP primary battle in Arizona to keep his Senate seat. McCain has previously pushed for comprehensive immigration reform but has been recently talking about securing America’s borders first, a position that puts the senator more in line with his conservative primary opponent, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.
But Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop told CNN those allegations are “nonsense.” He said Graham’s letter has nothing to do with McCain and everything to do with the fact that Senate Democrats are talking about a quick three-week window to try and push through immigration reform.
“Senator Graham worked on immigration for many months in 2007 with virtually every senator and two cabinet secretaries,” said Bishop. “It was an unprecedented effort and it is what it takes to put together a comprehensive plan. A serious immigration plan cannot be put together in three weeks.”
[end of article]
—end of initial entry—
John Hagan writes
From my reading of this they are not moving forth with immigration with Lindsey Graham on board. Without one republican vote, no amnesty. The point of this article is that Graham will not go along with amnesty so he can cover McCain’s a**.
LA replies:
How do you see this scuttling amnesty? The point is that they are moving forward with amnesty.
John Hagan replies:
Read between the lines of what the democratic source said. Graham was using the climate change bill as cover for McCain so the comprehensive immigration bill did not come up this year. McCain will lose to Hayworth if the immigration bill passes. Cap & trade was/is dead. Not enough votes.
Without Graham’s vote on immigration which he is now walking away from the republicans can hold a filibuster. It’s all about Graham running interference for McCain. The democratic source says as much in the article.
LA replies:
I note that the primary in Arizona is August 24. So debate on an amnesty bill and even worse passage of an amnesty bill before then (though would McCain reverse himself and oppose it?) would certainly hurt McCain in the primary and so John’s theory makes sense.
* * *
April 25, 8 a.m.
Other readers have sent information on William Gheen “exposure” of Sen. Graham.
Paul K. writes:
Did you hear about the statement made about Graham by William Gheen, President of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, at a Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina?
Gheen said, “US Senator Lindsey Graham is gay and while many people in South Carolina and Washington DC know that, the general public and Graham’s constituents do not. I personally do not care about Graham’s private life, but in this situation his desire to keep this a secret may explain why he is doing a lot of political dirty work for others who have the power to reveal his secrets. Senator Graham needs to come out of the closet inside that log cabin so the public can rest assured he is not being manipulated with his secret.”
So we need to figure out the “gay” motive that underlies the otherwise inexplicable behavior of Senator Graham. Actually, I think the suggestion that Graham may want to keep immigration off the table while McCain is fighting his primary battle makes some sense.
Also, Dan K. sent link to column by James Simpson in the Independent D.C. Examiner, which reads in part:
… We all know why the Democrats’ want amnesty. It is the most promising of their many, despicable, underhanded, self-serving plans to pack voter rolls with reliable democrat voters, constitution, rule of law, and the will of the people be damned. But why would Graham be willing to so blatantly stab his Party in the back, especially when the crucial midterm elections appear to be turning in the GOP’s favor?
Admittedly, he is not alone. John McCain has also supported amnesty, although he appears to be backpedaling now, and Graham gets a lot of help from other RINO Republicans on this and other issues in undermining a coherent, principled GOP message.
But Graham always seems to be out front. During the amnesty battle in 2007, Graham was showered with special recognition by the radical amnesty lobbying group National Council of La Raza. And lest their be any doubt, the umbrella group that pushed this legislation in 2007, the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, was a virulent brew of radical groups funded in large part by George Soros and following the Manufactured Crisis strategy.
In addition to earning the ire of conservative Republicans, none of this has gone over well in Graham’s home state, either. Graham has already been repeatedly censured by members of his state’s Republican Party for his positions that “do not serve the interests of South Carolinians,” and there is a move afoot to replace him when he is next up for re-election.
So what exactly is it with Graham? Well, we may have finally learned. An explosive Youtube video posted yesterday demands that Lindsay Graham come out of the “log cabin closet” and admit his homosexuality to the world.
At a Saturday, April 17th Tea Party rally in Greenville, SC, Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) President William Gheen demanded that Graham publicly admit what “many people in South Carolina and Washington, DC know.” As Gheen explained:
I personally do not care about Graham’s private life, but in this situation his desire to keep this a secret may explain why he is doing a lot of political dirty work for others who have the power to reveal his secrets. Senator Graham needs to come out of the closet inside that log cabin so the public can rest assured he is not being manipulated with his secret.
If that is Graham’s motive, it would certainly explain a lot. It would also provide justification for demanding his removal. Gheen is right that Graham’s private life is no one’s business, but if Graham has bought silence about it by agreeing to back these odious, nation-wrecking initiatives, he has betrayed his country, his Party, and utterly destroyed his own credibility.
Here’s the ALIPAC video that has gone viral on the web:
[end of Simpson article]
I knew about William Gheen’s statement about Graham’s private life before I posted the initial entry about Graham’s statement attacking the Democratic leadership for moving forward with the immigration bill. I do not see how the former “explains” anything about the latter. Here is an exchange I had last evening with Paul Nachman in which I first reacted to the Gheen story:
LA wrote:
What was the reason Gheen “outed” Graham?
LA continued:
I just looked it up, and it seems awfully raw. He’s accusing Graham of being homosexual and his stated reason for doing this is to be sure that Graham is not being “blackmailed” into supporting amnesty.
That really sounds like c**p to me. For one thing, Graham doesn’t just support amnesty, he’s out front on it, so he doesn’t have to be coerced into supporting it, it’s obviously an important cause for him. A person could be coerced into voting for a bill he doesn’t otherwise support. A person can’t be coerced into being at the forefront of an issue he doesn’t believe in. So Gheen looks like someone who is using this false argument to smear a political opponent. I think it’s disgusting.
From the article I found:
“US Senator Lindsey Graham is gay and while many people in South Carolina and Washington DC know that, the general public and Graham’s constituents do not,” Gheen said in the statement. Though Gheen claimed, both in the statement and at the Tea Party rally, that he does “not care about Graham’s private life,” he again said that Graham must declare his supposed homosexuality “so the public can rest assured he is not being manipulated with his secret.”
“I need to figure out why you’re trying to sell out your own countrymen and I need to make sure you being gay isn’t it,” Gheen said over the weekend.
Again, that’s nonsense. All sorts of people support open borders. The idea that someone would not support open borders unless he were being blackmailed is ridiculous. Gheen sounds like a moron.
Paul Nachman replied:
Yes, it is raw. I don’t care. Given the way the other side behaves, it’s just a question of tactical effectiveness, as far as I’m concerned. If it had been me giving that speech, I wouldn’t have done it (if it had occurred to me), because I doubt it will help. But Graham deserves no better. Ever seen his 2007 speech to la Raza? Be sure to watch it to the end (4 minutes).
LA replied:
Ok, Paul, but please recognize that the other side feels the same way about us. They feel that we deserve to be mistreated because of our evil positions. So let’s have a politics in which both sides go after the private sexual lives of their opponents.
Paul Nachman replies:
But we, overwhelmingly, haven’t behaved the way they’ve behaved. There’s really no equivalence. If you think it’s better to sit there and take it (turn the other cheek style), OK. But it’s not clear to me that appeals to facts and logic make us any headway.
I agree that it would be better if they did, both because I have no street-fighting instincts and because escalating vituperations are probably a road to nowhere. But even if they’re a road to nowhere, to just there and take it … ?
In the microcosm of the very lively letters page in the Bozeman paper, there’s a very systematic difference between letters from the Left and from the Right. The former are heavily laced with emotional outbursts and name-calling, while the latter are much more based on facts.
This obviously harks back to the recent discussion at your site of ways to separate blue-state and red-state populations.
Paul Nachman writes (in reply to LA’s initial question):
First, guessing you don’t know who Gheen is: Gheen founded and runs ALIPAC (Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee—an unfortunate name in its implied encouragement for legal immigration, as Gheen, after the fact, acknowledges). Roy Beck and others have said that Gheen is doing useful stuff. He’s concentrated on mobilizing people from across the country in support of good, state-level bills, piling on the phone calls and emails at critical times. I’ve been on the phone with Gheen a couple of times but haven’t met him. I mentioned him in this VDARE blog entry.
Gheen said at a TEA party rally (I think it was a TEA party—you can find the video. Here.) that, for example, Barney Frank is out in the open about being a homosexual (it’s also clear that Frank is a jerk!), so he can’t be compromised, but Graham is a homosexual who hasn’t acknowledged it, and he is, therefore, vulnerable to blackmail, like being forced to push bills that the public hates. So Gheen was putting it out in the open as a way of defusing that kind of pressure. Gheen prefaced this by saying he has no personal concern about homosexuality but that this was about important effects on public policy. It was near the start of his ~10-minute speech, and he didn’t dwell on the point.
Now I’d never thought about it before, but Graham does have some of the affect of being a homosexual, and apparently it’s taken for granted in some Washington circles that he is.
I could be persuaded either way on whether Gheen did something tactically useful in this attempted outing of Graham. But I have zero qualms beyond the questionable utility of the action.
LA replies:
I didn’t know about Gheen before this; if he’s doing good work, fine. I’m only responding to this particular action by him, and in my opinion it stinks. Now, could there conceivably be a valid reason to “out” a public person? Sure, let’s say a spy type situation where there’s a suspicion that coercion is involved. But as I said, Graham is in the forefront of pushing amnesty. He cares about the issue. He’s like John McCain on the issue. So he’s obviously not being coerced. So Gheen is doing this outing for an obviously illegitimate reason.
LA continues:
Does anyone think that John McCain’s support for amnesty is inexplicable unless McCain is secretly homosexual and he’s being blackmailed into supporting amnesty? So why is this homosexual theory needed in the case of Graham? Therefore, it seems to me that what Gheen has done is a raw smear, nothing else. In fact, it appears that Gheen is doing the very thing to Graham that he says he’s seeking to prevent other people from doing to Graham: using the exposure or the threat of exposure of Graham’s supposed homosexuality to intimidate him politically.
April 25, 5:30 p.m.
Kathlene M. writes:
My view on Graham’s puzzling statement is much simpler: Graham truly believes in “energy reform” and wanted to tackle that sequentially before immigration reform since that would give the latter a better chance of success. Immigration reform is a hugely volatile issue with the American public and requires very careful timing and maneuvering (after the November elections) by both RINOs and liberals. Graham wanted to tackle immigration after a cap-and-trade “success” since immigration would be more likely to have momentum. The White House, however, has had a knee-jerk reaction to the passage of the Arizona immigration bill and now wants to tackle “comprehensive immigration reform” within the next 3 weeks, according to Graham’s letter which was published within this liberal TPM article.
Per Graham’s statement: “Moving forward on immigration—in this hurried, panicked manner—is nothing more than a cynical political ploy. I know from my own personal experience the tremendous amounts of time, energy, and effort that must be devoted to this issue to make even limited progress…. Expecting these major issues to be addressed in three weeks—which appears to be their current plan based upon media reports—is ridiculous. It also demonstrates the raw political calculations at work here.”
In other words, Democrats are risking their own skins and those of their RINO comrades (e.g., Graham, McCain and others) by pushing immigration reform before November.
Reid wants to move immigration up now and have Congress ram it through it at the same time as or before cap-and-trade. Democrats received a shot of hubristic confidence from their ramming of the Obamacare bill, and now feel sure that they can overcome all legislative hurdles to their agenda. They seem arrogantly certain that they will not suffer as many losses in Congress as originally thought, and so onward they march like lemmings to the cliff. However, if they try to push immigration reform, especially before the elections, this will be the Democrats ultimate undoing.
(By the way, I noticed in the TPM comments section that liberals are also smearing Graham too for being reportedly gay. What does his being gay have to do with the argument?)
LA replies:
Thank you for this. Some thoughts and questions.
First, I apparently misunderstood what this Graham / Kerry / Lieberman energy bill was about. I thought it was Cap and Trade, which has been one of the Dems’ three or four major goals (along with health care, immigration, and education). But from the way Graham describes it in his letter, this bill is mainly about generating new energy sources, from nuclear power, off-shore drilling, and so on. He even describes the bill as “energy independence legislation,” completely leaving out any notion of Cap and Trade. Or is the bill perhaps a combination of Cap and Trade, and generating new energy sources? Perhaps that is what is implied when Graham says: “I share the belief that becoming energy independent and better stewards of our environment are complementary—not competing—standards.”
Second, what Graham seems to be saying is that the immigration bill the Democrats are now planning to go ahead with is not the sort of “bi-partisan” effort that resulted in the monstrous 2007 bill, a bill that Graham evidently thinks was a wonderful bill, but a purely partisan bill that the Democrats are planning to ram through in the manner of Obamacare. And the implication is that he will oppose such an immigration bill.
Finally, it seems to me that if the Democrats did ram through this immigration bill in three weeks, it would still only be the month of May, plenty of time left in 2010 for the careful work on the energy bill that Graham demands. So I don’t see any reason why Graham would not then get back on board with the energy bill.
Kathlene replies:
I’m confused about the energy bill too. I thought it was cap and trade mixed with energy reforms that many Republicans like so that Dems can get their bi-partisan support.
I cannot imagine how the Dems can ram through an immigration bill in three weeks since even Harry Reid admits the committee work isn’t even started. Perhaps the cynical ploy that Graham accuses the Dems of is the threat Obama made to look for legal avenues to neuter the Arizona bill.
So why couldn’t Graham work on immigration first and then work on energy afterward? This is what he said in a NY Times article:
“Mr. Graham said that any Senate debate on the highly charged subject of illegal immigration would make it impossible to deal with the difficult issues involved in national energy and global warming policy.”
So, as I understand it, the rancor and division over immigration reform would kill any good will in Congress in going forward on an energy bill. An immigration bill would produce a toxic atmosphere, more so than the Obamacare bill did.
LA replies:
It looks as though we’ve moved away from your simple explanation of Graham back to a world of perplexities. :-)
Kathlene replies:
Good point. :)
Paul K. writes:
I wonder what the Democrats intend to propose in their immigration bill that will distinguish it from Kennedy-McCain. It’s hard to imagine that they’ll propose something less odious, but with the stench of that fiasco still lingering, is it possible they intend to push something through that’s going to inflame the public even more? If so, that’s really extraordinary.
LA replies:
Right. Since, according to Graham, the 2007 Kennedy McCain Comprehensive National Suicide Act was a model of carefully crafted, bi-partisan legislation, why bother spending months writing a new law from scratch? Why not just dust off the 2007 bill, vote it through committee, and take it to the floor?
Kathlene writes:
Paul asked “is it possible they intend to push something through that’s going to inflame the public even more? If so, that’s really extraordinary.”
We live in extraordinary times. I mean, who would have thought after Scott Brown’s election to the Senate that the Dems would use extraordinary measures to push through “healthcare reform?” The Dems see this as their “historic” time to “seize the moment.” (I’m quoting climate czar Carol Browner’s latest statement.)
Or as John Kerry himself just said, “We have no choice but to act this year…. We can’t allow this moment to pass us by…. The White House and Senate Leadership have told us from the start that this is the year for action, and until they tell us otherwise we’re pressing forward.”
Kathlene M. writes:
This Washington Times piece by Byron York is helpful in understanding the Lindsey Graham puzzle. Basically Graham thought he had an Energy Bill understanding with the Dems, the Dems double-crossed him, and so Graham became angry and backed out.
A desperate Harry Reid hopes that immigration reform will fire up the Dem base and help him in his re-election effort, while Obama hopes to garner more Hispanic support and stop Dem losses in the November elections. “For Reid and his party, it’s a high-risk base-strategy gamble. Maybe it will work. But if it doesn’t, it could mean a Republican victory in November that’s even larger than GOP optimists predict.”
James P writes:
Kathleen writes,
Democrats are risking their own skins and those of their RINO comrades (e.g., Graham, McCain and others) by pushing immigration reform before November.
Reid wants to move immigration up now and have Congress ram it through it at the same time as or before cap-and-trade. Democrats received a shot of hubristic confidence from their ramming of the Obamacare bill, and now feel sure that they can overcome all legislative hurdles to their agenda. They seem arrogantly certain that they will not suffer as many losses in Congress as originally thought, and so onward they march like lemmings to the cliff. However, if they try to push immigration reform, especially before the elections, this will be the Democrats ultimate undoing.
Another interpretation is that the Democrats know they’re already toast electorally, based on the furious reaction to the health care bill, and hope to ramrod through cap-and-trade and immigration reform while they still have the votes. They have nothing left to lose—the electorate can’t get any madder than it is—so why not go for broke?
Paul K. asks,
I wonder what the Democrats intend to propose in their immigration bill that will distinguish it from Kennedy-McCain.
Why does it need to be different? Neither the “stimulus” package nor the health care bill were very different from other previously rejected pieces of legislation—I think the Democratic leadership more or less pasted together everyone’s wish list.
An interesting question is what role McCain will play. He has been acting tough on immigration lately, in a shameless effort to get re-elected. If he supports immigration reform, he risks getting thrown out of office, but if he opposes it he looks hypocritical (and, quelle horreur, “racist”) given that his name was on the previous effort.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 25, 2010 12:49 AM | Send