March 13, 2105--GOP Clown Car Update

I'm so excited. It is reported that South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham is running for the GOP presidential nomination. That's the only explanation why he is spending so much time up in frozen New Hampshire.

If he actually enters the race, stay tuned for lots of laughs.

He is best known as John McCain's butt boy. Graham is rarely spotted except when half hidden behind or nestled near his idol, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate.

Like McCain he is prone to making bad jokes that reveal more truth about him--as Freud would suggest--than laughs.

Recall McCain's "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" during his race against Barack Obama. He of course felt he was being pretty cool knocking off the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann." Many of the rest of us, though, thought he was semiconsciously tipping voters off about what he would do if elected.

In fact, McCain seems still to embrace this point of view. Incredibly, he was one of 47 GOP senators this week to sign an open letter to Iran's leadership, suggesting that unless they suspend their uranium enrichment program entirely these hawkish senators would ratchet up sanctions even more than at present or, if that failed, that they would press the military to bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.

Graham went even further in his lame joke. He suggested that he endorsed a military coup d'etat. He really did.

In Concord, NH on Sunday he said--

Here is the first thing I would do if I were President of the United States: I wouldn't let Congress leave town until we fix this. [Sequestration budget cuts for the Pentagon] I would literally use the military to keep them in if I had to. We're not leaving town until we restore those defense cuts. We're not leaving town until we restore the intel cuts.

It elicited a few self-conscious chuckles but unleashed a bit of a tempest in the press. So much so that a Graham spokesperson had to walk his comments back, assuring us that he was joking.

If he wants to be president, he should try harder to discover a sense of humor or hire some better joke writers.

In the meantime, the clown car is set to take off. Thankfully it already contains Rick Perry, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, and, yes, The Donald. Now if we could only get Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann back on the stump, the next 12 months, with Lindsey in the mix, could be quite a riot.