No one has to tell South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham he’s a long shot for the Republican presidential nomination.
He said that himself during a campaign stop at the Keene Senior Center Sunday night.
In fact, he described it as a “snowball’s chance in hell” — that is, if it weren’t for New Hampshire.
“You can’t buy New Hampshire,” he said. “Meeting people in intimate settings like this, who will talk to their neighbors — 250,000 of you will vote, maybe a few less in February, and you can determine the fate of the Republican nomination.”
If he gets a good sendoff in New Hampshire, he’ll win the next primary in his home state of South Carolina, he said. From there, he’d have momentum going into the Florida primary and others, he said.
Roughly 50 people turned out to hear Graham, 60, speak in a space just big enough to seat them. A few people sat on a makeshift stage with a red, white and blue Graham campaign banner behind them and a large American flag to their right.
Joining Graham for the nearly hour-long town hall meeting was friend and supporter Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was quick to joke about his unsuccessful bids for president after an audience member pulled out a McCain presidential campaign bumper sticker she had saved from his 2000 campaign.
“After I lost, I slept like a baby: Sleep two hours, then wake up and cry,” he said.
The audience responded with laughter, and continued to do so as Graham and McCain tossed out several jokes and jabs in between the topics of foreign policy, the economy, immigration and the country’s tax code.
“We need a person as commander-in-chief who can hit the ground running, a person who understands these challenges, and who understands America is still the strongest and greatest nation in the world. All it requires is leadership,” McCain said.
Graham, who was in the U.S. Air Force for 33 years, said he’s the one to provide that leadership.
The world is in a pretty bad spot right now, but it doesn’t have to be, he said.
“The bottom line is I don’t see how we can get out of this mess unless we do better together,” he said.
He said this means having an immigration policy that secures the border between the United States and Mexico, while coming up with a plan that doesn’t involve deporting all of the 11 million people living in the United States illegally. At the same time, the legal immigration process needs to be reformed to a merit-based system, and technology put in place that verifies people are who they say they are, he said.
However, when it comes to dealing with the Islamic State, there is no wiggle room for what Graham says needs to be done to defeat the group, which has taken control of parts of Iraq and Syria.
“Radical Islam is not going to surrender, someone has to defeat it,” Graham said. “If you don’t bend to their will, they’ll kill you. They’re nuts. They’re religious Nazis. And the world is falling apart because there is nobody leading the world to stand up to these guys.”
There needs to be a ground troop component if ISIS is going to be defeated, he said, and that involves the United States working with its allies and Arab nations.
“This war needs to end, and it’s going to end, but it’s going to be a generational struggle,” Graham said.
Graham and McCain’s visit to Keene was the final stop on a three-day tour of the Granite State. On Friday, the duo stopped in Manchester and Plymouth before returning to Manchester for Sen. Kelly Ayotte’s fifth annual Family Picnic on Saturday.
Also on Saturday, Graham and McCain visited Concord, Gilford, Dover and Exeter.
Before arriving in Keene on Sunday, they were in Milford, Pembroke and Deering.
