Ted Cruz vows to repeal “every word” of Obamacare and Common Core if he becomes president. He would “abolish” the IRS, flatten the Tax Code so Americans can fill out their taxes on a postcard, and “finally, finally, finally” secure the border.

To which Lindsey Graham says: not going to happen.


As he prepares his own likely 2016 bid, Graham is positioning himself as the realist in the GOP field, a battle-tested pol who knows what it takes to cut a deal and isn’t afraid to pour cold water on the lofty promises of his would-be rivals. In an interview with POLITICO, the South Carolina senator made clear that he plans to talk in sober detail about the need to overhaul the social safety net and reform the immigration system to allow foreign workers into the United States. He’s intending to look Republican primary voters in the eye and tell them the GOP needs to — yes — cut deals with Democrats if it wants to survive as a party.

“I’m not going to tell people things that they emotionally want to hear that I don’t think are going to happen,” Graham said in the Capitol on Tuesday.

He added: “People are picking up on anger and frustration with the president, which I get. They are turning that anger and frustration into an emotional response to try to get people to vote for them,” he said. “What I’m trying to do is talk about the anger and frustration but also try to get realistic assessments of how we solve these problems.”

“You can’t govern the country based on being angry,” Graham asserted.

It’s not the usual red meat that GOP candidates throw to the crowd — though Graham will have plenty of those zingers, particularly when it comes to his hawkish views on national defense. But the South Carolina Republican plans to tell voters what they don’t want to hear, something his advisers believe will go a long way in selling himself as an authentic, tell-it-like-it-is candidate.

By all measures, the 59-year-old Graham is a long shot in the race. He’s not a household name like Jeb Bush. He lacks the executive experience of Scott Walker. And he doesn’t have the bona fides with the conservative base and talk radio that Cruz has.

Polling shows Graham at rock bottom among all the potential contenders in a very crowded field.

Graham, who has served in Congress since 1995 and is an attorney in the Air Force Reserve, is not without a wide range of votes that add to his baggage headed into 2016. He voted for both of President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominees. He backs Loretta Lynch to be attorney general. He believes climate change is real and that the federal government should do something about it. He’s open to a Simpson-Bowles-type approach to rein in big deficits, something that would raise tax revenues. And he was an architect of the comprehensive immigration bill, something the right wing of his party despises.

Graham is not a candidate yet, but he is increasingly sounding like one. He’s traveled to early states like Iowa and New Hampshire, showing a penchant for lacing barbs and self-deprecating humor into a fiery stump speech — a campaigning style he polished during three successful Senate runs in South Carolina. He’s set up an exploratory committee called Security Through Strength, and the senator is now leaning toward launching a run this spring.

Graham says he will address his skeptics head-on, aggressively explaining his arguments that a president deserves to have well-qualified nominees; that both sides need to give a little to put the country on a sound fiscal path; and that a major immigration bill is the way to deal with the range of problems to fix a broken visa system and lax security at the borders. Overall, the message he plans to espouse: It’s better to have a president who is pragmatic than an ideological hard-liner.

“This campaign will be focused on a heavy dose of realism — surrounded by optimism if we make the right policy choices,” Graham said. “It’s about what I think is possible in terms of the current political construct and how to grow conservatism. But at the end of the day, it will be focused on problem-solving, which will require a certain level of realism and bipartisanship.”

If I run, we’re going to have a debate about what’s real and what’s not.

“If I run, we’re going to have a debate about what’s real and what’s not,” Graham added.

Graham would be a factor if only for the basic fact that he hails from South Carolina, which hosts the first presidential primary in the South in 2016. If he makes enough headway in one of the first two states — more likely New Hampshire than Iowa — Graham and his team believe he can pull off a win in his backyard of South Carolina.

Graham and Cruz get along well. They traded jokes sitting side-by-side at the State of the Union speech in 2014. And when the Texas Republican visited Charleston last April, Graham lavished his colleague with praise, noting in particular foreign policy views that align with his own.

Yet the two men represent the opposite wings of the party, which have frequently sparred since Obama took office: The no-compromise, tea party conservatives who believe Republicans need to return to their roots vs. the deal-making Republicans who argue that the GOP needs to be pragmatic in order to govern in a divided Washington.

That debate is bound to get more pronounced as campaign season takes shape.

“He realizes in the legislative branch, compromise is a principle you can’t do without,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the president pro tempore, referring to Graham. “That’s a very important thing where some of the others may not have that same attitude.”

In some ways, Graham is mimicking the style of his closest friend in the Senate, John McCain. The Arizona Republican won the GOP nomination in 2008 on his “Straight Talk Express,” pushing an aggressive foreign policy view that he used as a cudgel against primary foes, like Mitt Romney, who lacked experience on the global stage. Similarly, with foreign policy emerging in 2016 as a top-tier issue — stemming from growing concerns surrounding the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Iran and Russia — a candidate with a history of espousing hard-line national security views could penetrate among the GOP electorate, Graham’s allies say.

But the comparisons to McCain cut both ways.

Cruz, for one, points to the likes of McCain and Romney in arguing that Republican voters can no longer afford to nominate candidates who are part of the “mushy middle” and lose general elections by moving to the left. Instead, he argues, Republicans need to choose the boldest and most “courageous” conservative who will not yield from the party’s bedrock principles.

“Instead of a Tax Code that crushes innovation, that imposes burdens on families struggling to make ends meet, imagine a simple, flat tax that lets every American fill out his or her taxes on a postcard,” Cruz told supporters as he launched his candidacy on Monday. “Imagine abolishing the IRS!”

“Imagine in 2017 a new president, signing legislation repealing every word of Obamacare,” Cruz said to roaring applause, promising also to kill the Common Core educational program.

Asked about those promises Tuesday, Graham was blunt.

“You’re not going to do that,” he said. Instead, Graham explained his desire in particular to keep Obamacare provisions that prevent insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing illnesses and ensuring children can stay on their parents’ policies until the age of 26. “So there are parts of this bill that we would adopt.”

As for the flat tax, Graham said: “We can flatten out the Tax Code. That’s what Simpson-Bowles did. But we aren’t going to abolish the IRS.”

Similarly, Graham said he would talk at length about overhauling long-term “unfunded liabilities,” namely Medicare — the third rail of politics. And speaking to GOP audiences, he plans to make the case that “rational immigration reform” is needed “because we don’t have enough native-born workers.”

“I’m trying to lay a realistic picture of the national security and economic threats we face and the solutions that I think are achievable.”