Graham: Candidates need to say more than ‘Obama sucks’

Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) said Thursday that Republican presidential candidates, including himself, need to go beyond criticizing the sitting president.

{mosads}”People are very interested in … what I would do, not just how much I think Obama sucks,” Graham in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“At the end of the day, if you’re running for president, you need to let go of the idea that everything Obama has done has been wrong — ‘So what are you gonna do?’ “

Graham has moved to lock up the mantle of being the top foreign policy hawk in the rapidly expanding 2016 Republican field, arguing he would “take the fight” to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

“This is our war,” Graham said. “Is this just their problem or our problem? I think ISIL is humanity’s problem — I think it’s our problem, too,” he said, using an alternate acronym for the terrorist group.

He reiterated in the interview that he would send “around 10,000” U.S. troops to train and assist Iraqi forces but added that he would partition the country.

Graham said he would keep troops in Afghanistan, where the Obama administration had planned a drawdown. Obama has relented, given violence in the country, keeping 9,800 troops there through the end of this year.

Graham also praised former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner, for having advocated U.S. intervention in Libya.

“You may be tired of fighting them. They’re not tired of fighting you,” Graham said on MSNBC, referring to Islamic militants. He acknowledged that those weary of war “wouldn’t vote for me.”

“The last thing you want in these dangerous times is someone who’s weary of defending this nation. I am not weary,” he said in the interview, around the time news emerged on Jeb Bush’s date to announce a likely bid.

“At the end of this day — this fight for the heart and soul of Islam — we need to take sides,” he said.

“I’m on the side of people who won’t blow us up. I’m against the people who believe that their religion requires them to kill me, all the Jews, all the Muslims and all the Christians,” he added.

A potential bumper sticker? “Kills terrorists, grow jobs.”