INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

Lindsey Graham Says ‘I’m Running’, Touts Foreign Policy Experience

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 04:55 PST, May 18, 2015

Sen. Lindsey Graham has pledged to reveal his plans for a likely presidential campaign on June 1, yet in a new interview which aired Monday morning, he left little doubt as to what those plans entail.

Speaking with CBS This Morning on Monday, Graham touted his foreign policy experience, a quality notably lacking in several other GOP presidential contenders who have announced their nascent candidacies.

“I’m running because I think the world is falling apart. I’ve been more right than wrong on foreign policy,” Graham asserted.

When asked to compare himself to the current Republican field for 2016, Graham asserted that the qualifications of his potential opponents have little to do with his own ambitions.

“It’s not the fault of others or their lack of this or that that makes me want to run,” Graham stated. “It’s my ability in my own mind to be a good commander-in-chief and to make Washington work.”

Claiming that he has been accused of working too closely with Democrats in the past, Graham postulated that one of his top goals if he was to be elected would be increasing bipartisan co-operation, as well as taking a more aggressive stance on radical Islam, going “after them before they come back here again.”

In January, Graham established a political action committee (PAC) called Security Through Strength, as the Huffington Post reports, which has allowed him to examine the depth of interest that exists behind a possible presidential run. The committee has allowed Graham to gauge whether he has a viable path to the Republican nomination, a pre-campaign step that many others in the GOP field have neglected.

Earlier this year, Graham sparked controversy after claiming that he would hypothetically use the military to force Congress into passing a defense spending bill if he were president. As the Inquisitr previously reported, Graham made the comments at an event in Concord, New Hampshire on March 7. When Graham’s assertion was made public, observers quickly pointed out that such an action would amount to a “self coup,” in which an elected leader uses military force to seize more power than is given them.

Graham also weighed in on a question that has stumped several Republican contenders, asserting that he may not have sent troops into Iraq, given what is known about the country today. Lindsey Graham did assert, however, that roughly 10,000 American military personnel are needed to train and support the Iraqi army in the fight against ISIS.

[Photo by Alex Wong / Getty Images]

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