Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) has some tough words for President Barack Obama — who this week reached across the aisle to strike a deal with Republicans over extending the Bush-era tax cuts — calling him “politically immature.”
How does he figure? “By using rhetoric that calls us ‘hostage-takers,’ he believes, somehow, that the Left will give him some credit for hating us, or putting us in a bad light. But it just lowers him,” Graham told the National Journal Online. “He is whining, and no one likes a whining president. … There is a lot of disappointment on our side. Quite frankly, this is going to be hard to forget.”
Back in September, Graham told Fox News he wanted to see a three-year extension on the tax cuts for all Americans. Obama is now offering a two-year extension of the tax cuts, in exchange for an extension of unemployment benefits, among other things. Graham isn’t satisfied.
“I think he’s adrift,” Graham said. “His instincts, I think, are to be more centrist, since that’s the political future for him. But he doesn’t feel comfortable taking on his own party. And he sure doesn’t know how to cut a deal and sell it. This goes back to experience. He’s never done this stuff before. I hope the message is, before you elect someone president of the United States, the more experience they have in the real world, the better. He’s never sat down with a group of Republicans and Democrats — hard-headed right and hard-headed left — and hammered out a deal.”
And just for good measure, Graham closes by calling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s handling of the lame duck session “small minded” and “tone deaf.”
Read the full interview here.
