It started out as a question on abortion, but Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina managed to turn it into an assault on everyone on the stage who is not as eager to wage war on the Middle East as he is. The question from Martha McCallum warned that defunding Planned Parenthood would lead the Democrats to claim Republicans are “against women’s health, against these organizations that people will say provide positive things for many women.” Graham’s final statement: “If you’re running for president of the United States and you do not understand that we cannot defend this nation without more of our soldiers over there, you are not ready for this job.” How did we get here from there? To be fair, Graham began by saying he would support giving Planned Parenthood’s money to community health centers, which provide health care “without having to harvest the organs of the unborn.” But he quickly pivoted to his favorite subject: Foreign policy. “You want to see a war on women? Come with me to Iraq and Afghanistan, folks,” he said, going on to say that terrorism requires an American military action. In 2008, commentators accused then-Congressman Tom Tancredo of turning every issue to illegal immigration. But Graham took the cake with this answer. Graham did answer the next question by saying that his first executive order would be to “change the Mexico City policy, not take one dime of taxpayer money to fund abortion organizations overseas, and restore the NSA that’s been gutted.”
