BOULDER, Colo. — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) worked behind the bar Tuesday night, pouring shots and beer on the eve of the third GOP presidential debate.
{mosads}Graham was the inaugural guest for CNN’s Politics on Tap event, held at a local brewery in downtown Boulder, the city where candidates will debate on Wednesday night.
“I’m pouring too fast,” the GOP presidential candidate chuckled, his hand on the draft handle, after pouring several beers with an excess of foam. He also poured several shots of whiskey.
Glasses of beer three-quarters full of foam stacked up a bit as observers watched the jovial South Carolina senator make attempt after attempt to get a good pour.
CNN’s Dana Bash, who later held a Q-and-A session with the candidate during the somewhat “unorthodox” campaign event, attempted to demonstrate for him how to pour.
“This is why I would be a good president for you,” Graham joked during the Q-and-A, as Bash noted that Graham grew up in a bar his parents ran in Central, S.C.
Graham is entering the third presidential debate near the bottom of the GOP pack, taking 2 percent support in a New York Times/CBS News poll released this week.
“I think it sucks,” Graham said when asked about being in the undercard debate for for a third time with the poorly polling candidates. He said he didn’t think he was an undercard candidate on national security issues.
But after partaking in some alcohol himself, Graham didn’t let his inclusion in the undercard debate keep him from answering a series of serious questions sandwiched with more party-atmosphere games.
Bash asked Graham to play “date, marry or disappear forever,” a slightly more PG-13 version of a game in which participants choose what they would do with three people.
In this setting, the choices were fellow GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Graham joked that he’d go hunting on a “first date” with Palin.
Marry? “Carly, because she’s rich,” Graham quipped.
Pressed on the third category, Graham wondered whether Clinton was also rich.
“She said she was flat broke!”
–This report was updated at 10:37 a.m.