Lindsey Graham tossed out his planned speech before the Republican Jewish Coalition on Thursday to rip into the candidate who preceded him on stage, calling Ted Cruz an unelectable hard-liner who would alienate women and Latinos and cause the Republican Party to lose in 2016.

Graham had stood backstage as he listened to Cruz answer a question about how he would appeal to pro-choice women by saying he would instead bring more conservatives to the polls. Graham called that a recipe for electoral disaster.

“If the nominee of the Republican Party will not allow for an exception for rape and incest, they will not win,” Graham said. “Ted Cruz doesn’t have an exception for rape or incest.” 

The South Carolina senator went on. “He says the debate’s going to be the Little Sisters of the Poor. He’s gonna take the fight to the Democrats about their wanting to impose social policy on charitable organizations,” he said. “It will be about rape. … It will be about the nominee of the Republican Party telling a woman who’s been raped you’ve got to carry the child of the rapist.” 

“Good luck with that,” Graham said.

“We will lose if that’s the position of the nominee of the Republican Party,” he added. “We will lose young women in droves.”

It was a surprising turn before a crowd of Jewish Republicans who had expected to hear about Israel and American security. It surprised Graham, too.

“Not the speech you thought you were gonna hear,” he said. “Not the speech I thought I was going to give. But he didn’t answer the question. He did not answer the question.”

Many political observers thought Graham, one of the GOP’s leading hawks, first entered the 2016 race to counter Rand Paul, a leading noninterventionist. But as Paul has tumbled to the bottom of the polls, Graham is turning his rhetorical fire against Cruz. 

“After Mr. Cruz,” Graham said, “I’m going to talk to you about winning an election.” He lectured his Senate colleague and other Republicans for their hard-line stances on immigration, too. 

“How many of you believe we’re not winning elections because we’re too hard-assed?” Graham asked.
Then Graham criticized Cruz for the 2013 government shutdown, saying it made no sense to try to repeal a law — Obamacare — named after the sitting president. “I am tired of that crap,” he said. 

He went after the Texas senator on foreign affairs, too. “Ted Cruz says he’ll keep Assad in power,” Graham said, referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad. “I sure as hell will not.”

As one of the most outspoken pro-Israel voices in Congress, Graham entered the Washington, D.C., auditorium with enormous goodwill after years of advocating for the Republican Jewish Coalition’s agenda. “Do you think I ever need to talk to you about my support for Israel?” he asked to huge applause.

So he spent that reserve blasting away at Cruz.

“We can win this election,” Graham closed his address. “You know how you win this election. You don’t lose it.”