Lindsey Graham ends his 2016 presidential campaign

Withdrawing now means that national security Republicans who may have been holding off endorsing other candidates out of respect to Graham may now feel free to get more involved in the race by endorsing someone. Of the 54 Republican senators in the chamber, only 11 have made endorsements (one, John McCain, backed Graham, which actually brings the overall total down to 10 as of this morning).

Monday is the deadline in SC for candidates to exit the race without their names appearing on February’s primary ballot.

Former GOP presidential nominee and top Graham ally Sen.

Graham, who first broke the news in an interview with CNN, has been at the bottom of the polls, both nationally and in his home state.

“I’m going to suspend my campaign”.

“With Senator Lindsey Graham’s announcement, Republicans lost our most qualified, thoughtful, fearless and honest presidential candidate, not to mention the candidate with the best (and it seemed sometimes the only) sense of humor”.

The long-serving senator, who survived a Tea Party challenge in 2014, also warned that his party’s increasingly extreme stances on reproductive rights – such as a call for a ban on all abortions even in cases of rape or incest – would alienate women voters and spell electoral doom for the GOP.

In another sign of how on the outs he was within his party, Graham was one of the few Republican candidates that acknowledged the urgent need to address global warming. After the attacks on Paris that killed 129 people, Graham pushed for an authorization of military force against the Islamic State that would allow the U.S.to attack the groups’ supporters anywhere, with no time limit. It’s a national security issue, it’s a cultural issue and it’s an economic issue. Graham has announced Monday he is ending his bid for the GOP nomination.

Graham had in recent weeks been front-runner Donald Trump’s antagonizer in chief, criticizing the mogul and Texas Sen.