Values are at the core of ad critiquing Sen. Graham

American Values Network has been active in the climate discussion, but we are not a climate group. We added creation care and energy independence to our list of issue priorities for many of the same reasons Senator Graham originally championed these positions—it’s the right thing to do, and we just can’t afford to delay action. So it’s important that we start by making it clear that we still agree completely with what Senator Graham has said about the climate bill…at least we agree with what he said up until the last month or so. And therein lies the rub.

For most of this Congress, Senator Graham has effectively articulated why we can’t delay action on climate and why a climate bill must be comprehensive. He said that politicians need to stop talking about climate as if it’s a debate and begin understanding it’s a value. He’s said that we must act for the sake of our children and grandchildren. And he’s spoken about our moral responsibility to be good stewards of God’s creation and recognize that it is the least of these in this country and abroad who will suffer most if we fail to act.

Senator Graham has passionately argued that every day we wait to pass a comprehensive bill, we cost Americans jobs and continue to pay for the very bullets and IEDs killing our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan through our dependence on foreign oil. He’s said this issue is too important and the stakes are too high to allow partisan divisions to block action. And he was right!

None of those principles and arguments have changed, but for some reason (he’s provided different ones at different times), Senator Graham has. He refused to put his name on the bill he helped write. That was disappointing, but it would not have justified an ad.

Had Senator Graham truly believed this bill was doomed and simply decided his time would be better spent elsewhere, that would have been one thing. But instead, he continued to seek the spot light and has been telling everyone who will listen that the bill can’t pass. Those aren’t the actions of someone who believes in a cause but fears it can’t win. Those are the actions of someone who is trying to kill a bill, and fears the political momentum building for passage could force him to face the fact that he may have abandoned his convictions without even ending up on the winning side.

Senator Graham has become one of the most effective opponents of the bill he helped craft. He recently went as far as to meekly return to the Republican fold and sign on to their alternative message bill based on an approach he had previously maligned as “half-assed” and unacceptable. Some might just say, “Well that is politics. Politicians flip-flop and cave to pressure from their Party Leaders all the time.” But Senator Graham didn’t just use policy language or political language to justify his original position. He wrapped himself in faith and values language and justified his actions by higher moral principles.

Whether on the right or left, politicians need to know that the faith community will back them when they take stands on principle and for what is right, but if politicians are going to play the value/moral/greater good card to justify their positions, they also need to recognize that doing so holds them to a higher standard. You don’t get to appeal to values and higher principles and then abandon those principles and claim more base political excuses for doing so.

None of Senator Graham’s most recent excuses for abandoning this cause in anyway explain why movement on a comprehensive bill is no longer something we must do for the sake of our children and grandchildren, to protect our troops, protect American jobs, and care for God’s creation. Those were the reasons he gave for why he was supporting immediate action on a comprehensive bill, and they have not changed. It is against those arguments that his actions must be judged.

American voters, and especially America’s faithful, simply cannot accept as normal politicians who play the value card and appeal to our better angels but abandon those principles whenever the politician decides those arguments are no longer useful. Our media needs to recognize that someone willing to abandon these principles for personal political gain is not a credible source. And we can’t allow one politician who is feeling guilty about abandoning his principles to kill a bill that will cut the funding stream to the bombs and bullets killing our troops, create good American jobs, and help answer our calling to be good stewards of God’s creation which we hold in trust for future generations. That is why we ran the ad.

Eric Sapp is the executive director of American Values Network and founding partner of Eleison Group.