All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

Republican South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who was formally censured by members of his own party earlier this week for playing nice with Democrats on climate change and other legislation, has spoken out in his own defense, according to Capitol Hill's newspaper Roll Call.

The Charleston, South Carolina Post and Courier reported that the Charleston County Republican Party voted on Monday to censure Graham for not upholding the Republican platform. The group cited his cooperation with Democratic senator John Kerry on the proposed cap-and-trade bill and his support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Obama's $700 billion bailout plan.

"U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham -- in the name of bipartisanship -- continues to weaken the Republican brand and tarnish the ideals of freedom, rule of law, and fiscal conservatism," the resolution reportedly reads.

"There have been a lot of things over the years that people have been dissatisfied with the senator for doing but I think the cap-and-trade issue is the straw that broke the camel's back," Lin Bennett, the county GOP chairwoman, said according to the South Carolina State. "We have a state platform that if you want to run as a Republican in our state part of that platform includes ideals and goals we would like to see and one of them is smaller, and less government intrusion into people's lives."

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Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham Thursday blamed the lack of civility in today's political discourse on voters' willingness to send confrontational representatives to Washington as well as the 24-hour news cycle, talk radio and organizations like MoveOn.org.

"Can you imagine writing the Constitution today?" Graham said during a conversation with Jeffrey Goldberg at The First Draft of History, a conference in Washington, D.C. produced by The Atlantic, the Newseum and The Aspen Institute. He speculated that Fox News host Bill O'Reilly would complain that "Ben Franklin [is] giving in on something."

Asked what he thinks of another Fox News personality, Glenn Beck, Graham replied, "Only in America can you make that much money crying."

He said Beck is "not aligned with any party as far as I can tell. He's aligned with cynicism. And there's always been a market for cynicism."

"But we became a great nation not because we are a nation of cynics. We became a great nation because we are a nation of believers," he added.

Graham addressed a variety of topics during the discussion, including John McCain's loss in the 2008 election. Graham, a close ally of McCain, had been a central figure in his campaign. He said that the collapse of the economy had been "game, set and match," essentially guaranteeing that then-Senator Barack Obama would win the election.

Graham lauded Mr. Obama for energizing young people and also engaging Hispanic voters, which he said Republicans had turned off with rhetoric on immigration "coming out of certain quarters of our party."

He said Mr. Obama had passed the "ready to be commander-in-chief test" during the debates and that the Democrat had been helped by the unpopularity of then-President Bush and his policies. "The Republican label was very much tainted," Graham said.

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Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said Wednesday he will not vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, but the first Latina nominee to the high court did win the support of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the most outspoken Republicans to observe her confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The two senators announced their positions one day after Republicans requested delaying the vote to confirm Sotomayor for another week.

"Her life story ... is something that every American should be proud of, and if her selection to the Supreme Court will inspire young women, particularly Latino women, to seek a career in the law, then that is a good thing and I hope it will," Graham said, according to the Associated Press.

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Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) held a press conference today forcefully pressing for passage of the Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act, which would prohibit the release of photographs depicting abuse of detainees by U.S. troops.

"To release the photos is, to me, sheer voyeurism," Lieberman said. "It's a disclosure without a purpose, and it's disclosure that brings great risk."

Lieberman said President Obama "did the right thing" in opposing the release of such photos last month. He said doing so would "lead to people entering the war against the United States."

"In our opinion, the release of these photos -- for no purpose at all, no good purpose -- will lead to the death of Americans, including, particularly, those brave Americans who serve us in the military," said Lieberman.

Graham suggested that the two senators would effectively shut down the Senate via filibuster if Congress does not pass the legislation. "We're not going to do any more business in the Senate," he said. "Nothing's going forward until we get this right."

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Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a senior Republican on the Judiciary committee which will likely confirm Supreme Court hopeful Sonia Sotomayor this summer, harshly criticized the nominee's 2001 remarks that a Latina would make "better" decisions than a white man.

"That statement did not strike me particularly appropriate," the senator told CBS News' Political Consultant John Dickerson Tuesday, ahead of his meeting with the nominee.

"As a matter of fact, I thought it was inappropriate," he said. "I think she deserves a second chance [but] I don't know if I would have gotten one."

The senator, in the most damning words yet from a senator, said he will not be basing his entire decision on the remarks but thinks Sotomayor should apologize.

"I think it needs to be addressed and...she needs to apologize because it offended me," he admitted to Dickerson.

Graham said that as a white male he has been "knocked around" but conceded that other Americans have been through "far worse."

"To say those experiences make one better, a person better than anyone else is just not what you want in a judge," he argued.

Graham said, "[I]f I find myself in court, I want to believe that that judge is going to fairly evaluate me and quite frankly she's got to convince me if I found myself in litigation with a Latina woman, that I'd get a fair shake."

Dickerson bluntly asked the senator if he thinks he will get an apology Wednesday in his one-on-one meeting with Sotomayor.

"I'll leave that up to her," Graham responded.

He said he wants a judge to receive good marks from the lawyers with whom they have worked.

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