WASHINGTON — Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Thursday unleashed some of the sharpest Republican criticism yet of the party’s top presidential contenders, Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, saying either would mean “death” for the party’s chances in November.
“If you nominate Trump and Cruz, I think you get the same outcome,” he told reporters. “Whether it’s death by being shot or poisoning doesn’t really matter. I don’t think the outcome will be substantially different.”
Mr. Graham, who recently suspended his campaign for president and threw his support behind Jeb Bush, offered his unvarnished opinion the day after Bob Dole, the former Kansas senator and 1996 presidential nominee, said it would be “cataclysmic” for the party if Mr. Cruz were nominated.
The remarks by Mr. Dole, who is seen as one of the party’s elder statesmen, appeared to have released Mr. Graham to speak candidly about a campaign he called “beyond strange” on Thursday.
“Donald Trump, I think, is the most unprepared person I’ve ever met to be commander in chief,” Mr. Graham said, adding that Mr. Trump’s grasp of foreign policy “scares the hell out of me.”
Mr. Graham said he shares Mr. Dole’s concerns, explaining that he believed Mr. Cruz and Mr. Trump would make it easy for Hillary Clinton to win the election.
“Dishonest — which is Hillary Clinton in the eyes of the American people — beats crazy,” he said. “I think Donald Trump’s domestic and foreign policy is gibberish.”
Mr. Cruz, meanwhile, could prove too rigidly ideological to solve the nation’s problems, he said.
“If you take those two off the table, dishonest loses to normal, so let’s just pick somebody out of the phone book if we have to,” Mr. Graham said. “We can win this election unless we lose it.”
Asked about Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on the other side of the ticket, Mr. Graham said he found his socialist leanings troubling.
“Bernie Sanders is a fine man, but he is by far the most liberal person to ever offer themselves as a candidate in a serious fashion for president of the United States,” he said.
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