Lindsey Graham too tired to vote for START

The senator can't support the treaty because his good friend Joe Lieberman made the Senate vote on DADT

Published December 20, 2010 6:01PM (EST)

Poor Lindsey Graham was so tired, Friday, from so much voting. So, so much voting!

He's been forced to ignore START -- a treaty that was negotiated like, eight months ago? -- because of this voting, this week, on other things: "And I’ve had some time to think about START but not a lot and it's really wearing on the body." Poor Lindsey Graham!

He was so tired that he could barely make it to a television studio the following Sunday to complain, some more, about how much voting he's had to do lately.

"If you want to have a chance of passing START, you better start over and do it in the next Congress, because this lame duck has been poisoned," Graham told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer.

Poisoned! The lame duck has been poisoned. (Good thing the Senate passed that new food safety act, again, I guess!) (Wait, sorry -- duck isn't covered by the FDA.)

Who did the poisoning? Those awful Democrats, of course. And their leader -- the man who forced a lame duck vote on "don't ask, don't tell" and even threatened to stay in session through Christmas to get it done -- was Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham's close friend, and the man Graham once called "a national treasure."

And because of Lieberman, Graham can no longer support the START Treaty, because it's just too much voting.

At the beginning of the month, Graham said he'd support START once the tax cut issue was taken care of. Now that that's done, it's time to complain about how the GOP isn't going to be allowed to amend the treaty ... because amending treaties means they have to be renegotiated from scratch.

"We haven't had a serious debate on START," Graham said on CBS yesterday. And he's right: We've had an incredibly silly debate on START, because of incredibly silly people like Lindsey Graham.


By Alex Pareene

Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene

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Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Don't Ask Don't Tell Joe Lieberman Lindsey Graham Republican Party U.s. Senate War Room