HAMPTON COVE, NEW HAMPSHIRE — Sen. Lyndsey Graham (R-SC) will not be one of the ten Republicans participating in the first televised debate of the 2016 primary season when Fox News hosts the GOP this week. That is because per Fox’s rules, Graham did not poll highly enough in an amalgamation of national polls they conducted in order to determine the top ten candidates. Reports out of the Graham campaign are that the South Carolina Republican is “just plumb flabberghasted” and “heart broken” over the lack of attention his campaign will get now that he has to be part of Fox’s earlier debate broadcast for what many are dubbing the “B-Team.”
“Senator Graham is absolutely perplexed by getting shoved out of the spotlight in favor of someone like John Kasich, who just entered the race,” said one Graham staffer. “But we think he’s come up with a great plan to get his poll numbers up, and maybe the next debate will feature him.”
According to the same staffer, Graham can see now that “grandstanding and bloviating without any substance to your words” is what voters are responding to. He said that “Senator Graham can very easily recognize that Mr. Trump’s bombast has gotten him to where he is, and he is willing to step up his attention-whoring to grand heights if needs be to compete with the field.”
“I may not be as dumb as Scotty Walker. I may not be as aloof and disconnected as Jeb! I may not be as vacant-eyed and smarmy as Rick Perry,” Graham would tell the press late Tuesday after the prime time debate lineup was announced, “but as anyone who watches the Sunday talk programs knows, I am truly gifted as an attention-starved ideologue. So that’s why I’m going to get a GoPro camera and have a nice, beefy, muscle-bound tattoo artist slap Mr. Ronald Reagan’s beautiful visage on my beautiful Southern Derriere.”
Graham told the media that he “know[s] that no one is more revered by Republicans than St. Reagan himself” and that “nothing will show [his] allegiance and fealty to him like having a massive, hulking, sweaty, ripped, cut, six-pack-ab’d tattoo guy yanking down [his] britches, steady [his] perfectly curved and tanned buttocks with his firm, brick sized hands, and drawing the beautiful image of our greatest president on [his] butt.”
Reporters asked Sen. Graham how he’d feel if he got the tattoo and not only didn’t win the presidency, but never even got to participate on the big stage. Graham laughed boisterously and when he’d calmed down enough he answered the question.
“You know, I thought about that very calamitous outcome myself,” Graham said while sipping a mint julep that had somehow appeared in his left hand, “but I do declare that even if that were to happen, I’d still be the richest man in the Senate.” A perplexed media corps looked around at each other. Graham, sensing their confusion, clarified further. “I’ll be the only sitting U.S. Senator with a tattoo of Reagan on his butt. I know that Strom Thurmond had one of Nathan Bedford Forest, and Barney Frank and Hillary Clinton got one of each other on their inner thighs, but as far as I know I’ll be the only one with a sweet tattoo of Reagan on his ass.”
The Graham campaign says they have narrowed the list of tattoo parlors down to “a small handful” and they’ll let the press know when Graham has decided which one to patronize. As of this publication, Graham is currently ranked at or near the bottom of every national poll that asks which of the 87 official Republican candidates voters would choose.
