Lindsey Graham-- Southern Belle In Distress Over Syria Hysteria

I wonder if the polling was done before or after the above Daily Show, but in either case, Lindsey Graham's reelection prospects look difficult... at best. Over a third of South Carolina Republicans have a negative opinion of their senior senator. So a third... the crackpot nihilists and tea baggers. That leaves two-thirds who could vote for him, right? Dig a little deeper into the results and you find that only 31% of GOP voters say they will vote for Graham regardless of his primary opponent. Nearly 20% of Republicans said they would not vote for Graham. Republicans say they dislike Graham for his lack of conservative principles, his association with McCain, and tendency to compromise too much with Democrats. And they are pissed off Graham wanted to bomb Syria. Worse still...

“Republican primaries regularly attract about 20 percent of the registered voters, and they are more conservative and more ideological than voters in the general election,” Clemson political scientist Dave Woodard. “It often happens that popular incumbents are derailed on the way to re-election by upstart challengers in GOP primaries.”

Woodward conducted the poll and he pointed out that “This is the lowest 're-elect regardless' figure I have seen for any incumbent in 20-odd years of polling except for one other lower figure." He thinks he may have been because the polling was done right in the middle of the Syria bombing crisis.

The Republican primaries are less than a year away, and Graham already has three GOP challengers: state Sen. Lee Bright, Piedmont businessman Richard Cash and Nancy Mace, a businesswoman who was The Citadel's first female graduate.

Mace said Graham's 31 percent re-elect number shows how dissatisfied voters are with him. “It is clear South Carolina voters are looking for new leadership,” she said. “Sen. Graham has amassed a $6.3 million war chest by serving special interests. However, this poll shows it will take more than money to win a republican primary in South Carolina.”

The Democrat in the race, Jay Stamper, was not polled. His position on Syria, though, was right in line with the vast majority of South Carolina voters, regardless of party. This is what he wrote for DWT about the bombing prospects while Graham was running on every TV show he could boosting a war:

Lindsey Graham is pushing the same old tried-and-true rhetoric to try to scare us into agreeing to an unnecessary and illegitimate war. He wants us to believe that Assad's recent chemical weapons attack on Syria's own citizens is a prelude to an attack against the national interests of the United States.

According to a recent article in the US News and World Report, Graham said that “...if we get Syria wrong, within six months-- and you can quote me on this-- there will be a war between Iran and Israel over their nuclear program.” Lindsey Graham is beating the drum for war, and he will say almost anything to pull the United States into another war in the Middle East.

Syria has no nuclear weapons, and no prospect of getting them any time soon. Also, Syria cannot reach the United States with its Soviet-era SCUD and OTR-21 Tochka missiles. They have no means of delivering a weapon-- nuclear or otherwise-- to any territory of the United States. In short, Assad's totalitarian regime, however criminal or misguided, is not a legitimate threat to the United States.

This inconvenient truth caught up with Graham recently. At a Republican breakfast, when confronted, he got creative. The story Graham created-- and actually expected the American people to believe-- was that the real threat from Syria, “... won’t come to America on top of a missile, it’ll come in the belly of a ship in the Charleston or New York harbor.”

Really Lindsey? So Syria, a country without nuclear weapons, is going to pick a fight with the United States by sneaking a nuclear weapon past our defenses and into the ports of Charleston or New York? Unbelievable.

Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain want us to use military force to “change the momentum on the ground.” This means helping the rebels, some of whom are allied with Islamist terrorist networks such as Al-Queda. Military intervention to change the momentum on the ground would give legitimacy to the guerrilla movements of terrorist groups. At the end of this conflict, these groups would treat us the same way the Mujahedin did in Afghanistan: they would use our own arms, methods, and money to wage guerrilla war on the United States.

Who really wins when Lindsey gets his way? Defense contractors. This is why many of the biggest federal defense contractors donate to Lindsey Graham. Graham is one of the most consistent advocates for military intervention. And what is worse? Graham would spend a lot of your tax money waging an illegitimate war, but this is a small fraction of your money that he would spend rebuilding a demolished Syria.

Our nation is still emerging from two wars and an economic depression. We have spent $1.4 trillion over the last ten years waging costly overseas wars in the Middle East. Rather than getting engaged in another military intervention that could expand into another full-scale conflict in the Middle East, we should focus our efforts on rebuilding our own country first. While the use of chemical weapons is a crime against the people of Syria and a violation of our modern rules of war, Assad did not attack the United States. We should not get involved with the Syrian civil war.

Help me send a message to Washington DC so that the career politicians there understand that the United States should not choose sides in a civil war when there are no “good guys.” I need your help to remind Washington DC that our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines deserve better than to be put in harm's way for profit or for the re-election of a career politician.

Stamper has been endorsed by Blue America and you can contribute to his campaign here.