“Other than the 4th Amendment what indispensible American liberties would he sacrifice?”
by digby
I catch up with Lindsey Graham’s senate race over at Salon today. He’s not exactly setting the voters on fire — unless it’s to fire him. Just this week the Charleston county Republicans censured him for failing to be conservative enough. Seriously.
And if he does pull out the nomination anyway, he’s got a handsome, neer-do-well, socialite scion of a very famous South Carolina political family preparing to run against him the general as a libertarian:
It’s unlikely that South Carolina won’t end up reelecting Lindsey Graham. But it could be a very interesting race and one that Ravenel seems willing to wage just to make Graham’s life miserable. And he has a specific reason, according to this letter to the editor from last February:
Shortly after the federal government’s domestic spy network was exposed last spring, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham went on national television to say he was “glad” the National Security Agency was monitoring, collecting and storing our personal information.
“I’m a Verizon customer,” Graham said. “I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the government if the government is going to make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist phone with somebody in the United States. I don’t think you’re talking to the terrorists. I know you’re not. I know I’m not.”
I’m curious: Other than the Fourth Amendment (which Graham is explicitly rejecting), what indispensible American liberties would he sacrifice?
That’s an unusual comment coming from a South Carolina Republican. But then Ravenel is not a Republican. As he says, “having gone to prison, I was emancipated from the Republican Party.” Isn’t there an old saying that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged and a liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested? It’s hard to think of a better reason to put some Republican crooks in jail than that.
Whatever happens, it promises to be wildly entertaining. Pass the mint juleps and crab cakes …
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