If you’re hiding under your bed in terror, you’ve just found your presidential candidate [View all]

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Acting on the time-tested theory of presidential candidacies known as “Why the hell not?”, Senator Lindsey Graham joined the 2016 GOP contest today. And right from the outset, after thanking folks for coming and saying he’s running, Graham got to his candidacy’s central rationale:

I want to be president to protect our nation that we all love so much from all threats foreign and domestic.

So get ready. I know I’m ready.

I want to be president to defeat the enemies trying to kill us, not just penalize them or criticize them or contain them, but defeat them.

Ronald Reagan’s policy of “peace through strength” kept America safe during the Cold War. But we will never enjoy peaceful co-existence with radical Islam because its followers are committed to destroying us and our way of life. However, America can have “Security through Strength.”

If you think about it, that almost sounds like Graham is saying that Reaganism isn’t enough, a disturbing hint of heresy. Since we can’t have peace, Graham implies, we might as well just get ready for war.

And unless his entire career has been a ruse, that’s exactly what we’d get with a Lindsey Graham presidency. You thought George W. Bush liked to play on Americans’ fears to justify military action? Well that was nothing. Lindsey Graham has never met a foreign policy challenge that didn’t terrify him down to the marrow of his bones. Let the other candidates treat voters like children, telling them that there are serious threats to America that must be confronted. Only Lindsey Graham has the courage to look voters in the eye and say forthrightly: terrorists are coming to kill your children, unless Iran gets to them first and incinerates them in a nuclear blast.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/06/01/if-youre-hiding-under-your-bed-in-terror-youve-just-found-your-presidential-candidate/?hpid=z3