Lindsey Graham drops out of 2016 GOP race
South Carolina Senator and Republican presidential candidate Lindsey Graham has said he is dropping out of the race for his party’s nomination.
“Today, I’m suspending my campaign for president,” the South Carolina senator said in a video posted on YouTube, stating that it had been “a campaign we can be proud of” and that was focused on US security.
Graham’s focus on national security and fighting terrorism was influential in the overall primary debate, but some analysts claim Graham was not well known outside South Carolina or the Senate, while others says it’s Graham’s policies which are the issue.
Lindsey Graham
“While I am not prepared to make an endorsement, I will continue to speak out in support of candidates who share my commitment to defeating ISIL & solving our nation’s most difficult problems.”
“Four months ago at the very first debate, I said that any candidate who did not understand that we need more troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria to defeat ISIL was not ready to be Commander in Chief,” Graham continued. “At the time, no one stepped forward to join me. Today, most of my fellow candidates have come to recognize this is what’s needed to secure our homeland.”
He added: “While we have run a campaign that has made a real difference, I have concluded this is not my time.”
“This has been a problem solver’s campaign. However the centerpiece of my campaign has been securing our nation,” Graham said in his farewell video. “I got into this race to put forward a plan to win a war we cannot afford to lose and to turn back the tide of isolationism that was rising in our party. I believe we have made enormous progress in this effort.”
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that with Graham’s announcement, “Republicans lost our most qualified, thoughtful, fearless and honest presidential candidate, not to mention the candidate with the best (and it seemed sometimes the only) sense of humor.”
“Despite the disadvantages he faced in resources and debate opportunities, Lindsey’s message of serious statesmanship and problem-solving in public affairs, his forthright opposition to policies and attitudes that would endanger our country and reflect poorly on our party, and his genuine decency and humility won him many new admirers,” McCain said in a statement.
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