Opinion: Lindsey Graham keeps the quips coming as John McCain’s sidekick
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We watched Lindsey Graham almost a decade ago when, as a House member from South Carolina, he helped prosecute the impeachment case against President Bill Clinton in the Senate. His skills as a lawyer impressed, and we were not surprised when he won his own Senate seat a few years later.
What HAS surprised us is the comedic role he’s been playing as he warms up audiences for good friend John McCain on the presidential campaign trail.
Earlier this week, he worked Olympian Michael Phelps into a jest as he sought to assure North Carolinans that their state would remain in the GOP column on Tuesday (and implored them not to let him down).
Today, as he introduced McCain in Ohio, his humor was edgier -- he targeted ACORN, the group that works to empower low-income Americans and has been under fire for turning in fraudulent voter registrations.
The venue for the McCain rally was the lawn of a junior high school and, The Times’ Maeve Reston reports, the crowd included lots of school children. Perhaps with that in mind, Graham cracked: “Thanks to ACORN, 13-year-olds are the fastest-growing voting demographic in the country. So turn out. Sign ‘em up.”
Both Graham and McCain poked fun at Obama’s program-length, nationally televised ad Wednesday night.
“Anybody see the infomercial last night? Thank God for cable,” Graham said laughing. “If we’d played that at a prison camp it would have violated the Geneva Convention.”
McCain, as he had before the commercial aired, scoffed at as an Obama ‘address to the nation before the election.” He also spotlighted his rival’s remarks in an ABC interview Wednesday night.
“Last night Sen. Obama said if he lost, he would return to the Senate and try again in four years with a second act. That sounds like a great idea to me,” McCain said gleefully. “Let’s help him make it happen.”
-- Don Frederick