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[h=4]Lindsey Graham: '98.6% sure' to run, and on a different path on immigration[/h]South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who says he's "98.6% sure" he'll run for the Republican presidential nomination, vows to chart a course on immigration at odds with every other contender in a large and growing GOP field.
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Senator Lindsey Graham spoke about his presidential ambitions on Capital Download with Susan Page.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.(Photo: Steve Elfers, USA TODAY)
WASHINGTON — South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who says he's "98.6% sure" he'll run for the Republican presidential nomination, vows to chart a course on immigration at odds with every other contender in a large and growing GOP field.
Graham's formal announcement, expected within the next few weeks, would add the voice of a leading national-security hawk and an architect of the 2012 Senate immigration bill that for a time raised hopes of a bipartisan agreement on a comprehensive overhaul.
"If I were president of the United States, I would veto any bill that did not have a pathway to citizenship," Graham, 59, told Capital Download, USA TODAY's weekly newsmaker series. "You would have a long, hard path to citizenship ... but I want to create that path because I don't like the idea of millions of people living in America for the rest of their lives being the hired help. That's not who we are."
USA TODAY
Capital Download - Conversations with Washington's biggest newsmakers
The third-term senator from a solidly red state insists that his position doesn't doom his long-shot bid for the Republican nomination — and he says the GOP risks electoral disaster in 2016 with its current hard line on immigration.
"We'll lose," he says flatly. "I mean, we've got a big hole we've dug with Hispanics. We've gone from 44% of the Hispanic vote (in the 2004 presidential election) to 27% (in 2012). You'll never convince me ... it's not because of the immigration debate."
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton spotlighted the GOP's tough stance on Tuesday, announcing in Las Vegas that if elected she would expand President Obama's executive order allowing young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children to avoid deportation. She defended providing a path to citizenship. "Make no mistake: Not a single Republican candidate, announced or potential, is clearly and consistently supporting a path to citizenship — not one," she said.
With Graham's likely announcement, that is no longer true. While he opposes Obama's use of executive orders to protect the "DREAMers," Graham's position on citizenship puts him closer to Clinton than to any of his GOP rivals on immigration.
ONPOLITICS
Hillary Clinton backs path to citizenship in immigration overhaul
Most of the other Republican contenders say border security must be tightened before the legal status of an estimated 11 million undocumented residents can be discussed. None of the other hopefuls now endorse simultaneously providing a path to citizenship.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who also helped negotiate the bipartisan Senate bill, now says securing the borders must come first. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker once said he supported a path to citizenship but now opposes it. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush endorses a path to legal status short of citizenship.
Sen. Lindsey Graham R-S.C., speaks to reporters at the Capitol on March 10, 2015.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images)
"One of the candidates here helped write the bill; he now says we've got to secure the border first," Graham says, referring to Rubio. "That's not practical. No Democratic Congress is going to give the Republican Party everything we want on border security until you tell them what happens to the 11 million."
Graham took some shots at another fellow senator and presidential rival, Rand Paul of Kentucky, for his approaches on national security issues involving Iraq, Iran, Syria and Israel. "He's a nice man; I like him a lot (but) he's a libertarian. He is one step behind leading-from-behind," Graham said. "At the end of the day, his world view has not stood the test of time and I think he'd be the worst possible person to send into the ring when it came to foreign policy."
ONPOLITICS
Graham fires back at Paul on foreign policy
Worse than Hillary Clinton?
"She could get to his right very easily," he said.
Graham also blasted Clinton, who by one count has answered just seven questions from reporters since she formally announced her presidential campaign.
"I don't know how people in your business put up with this," he says. "She wants to be president of the United States. She's doing a listening tour from North Korea. Kim Jong Un — whatever the new guy's name is, Kim Jong Un? There's more access to him than I think there is to her."
Watch more of the interview on Capital Download on WUSA9 in Washington, 8:30 a.m. Sunday.
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