Graham challenges potential 2016 rivals on national security

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a possible 2016 presidential contender, is challenging his potential rivals, urging them to directly address national security issues.

“I hope the Republican Party will not only just attack Obama, but offer solutions. I think leading from behind is a disaster. I think leading from the front is required,” he said during an event at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.

{mosads}“Leading from behind is ahead of where Rand Paul is at,” he said in a jab at the Kentucky Republican senator, who is also weighing a 2016 run. “Rand Paul’s got to move forward to catch up with leading from behind.

“There are people in my party to the left of Obama,” added Graham.

“At least Obama would kill Anwar al-Awlaki without getting a court order,” he said, referring to the American-born cleric and senior Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula figure, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011.

Graham’s comments also came the same day Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) became the first Republican to formally announce a presidential run.

Asked how the Texas lawmaker might handle nuclear talks with Iran, Graham replied “Ted with nukes, Ted with nukes, let’s see,” to laughter.

“I don’t know what Ted would do but he should come up here and answers those questions, don’t you think?” he asked the audience.

Graham said that from a “cost benefit analysis, when we give up the role we’ve been dealt in the world of being the leader of the free world, it costs us more over time.”

“This flirtation with isolationism in my party – I stood up to it when it was hot as fire now it’s a little bit cool,” he continued.

Graham isn’t committing to a White House run, but called it “very touching” that his close friend, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), has touted his possible candidacy in recent weeks.

He said the way to defeat “radical Islam” is to “keep weapons of mass destruction out of their hands,” adding that millions, not thousands, of Americans could have died in Sept. 11 attacks if the terrorists had possessed a more destructive weapons.

“‘If I were president, the centerpiece of my presidency would be to prevent that marriage from ever happening,” Graham said.

He said radical groups like the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are “large, they’re entrenched and they enjoy great safe havens and they’re rich.”

“My goal would be to take every radical Islamic organization, make them small, poor and on the run and stay after them wherever they go,” Graham said, adding he would “spend most of my time” developing local forces in the region.

Graham also ribbed his GOP colleagues on the issue of global warming.

“When it comes to climate change being real, people in my party are all over the board,” he said. “I did the trifecta: I said that it’s real, that man is contributing to it in a substantial way — but the problem is Al Gore has turned this thing into a religion.”

He said climate change is “not a religious problem for me, it is an economic problem, it is an environmental problem.”

“I think the Republican Party has to do some soul searching. Before we can be bipartisan, we have to figure out where we are as a party. What is the environmental platform of the Republican Party? I don’t know either,” he added.

“I’d like to have a debate within the party. ‘Can you say that climate change is a scientifically sound phenomenon, but can you reject the idea you have to destroy the economy to solve the problem?’ is sort of where I’ll be taking this debate,” said Graham.