Senator Graham using Russia as boogeyman: Analyst

A political analyst says one reason behind US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham’s remarks about Russia’s alleged interference in the November presidential election is that the Republicans are always looking for a boogeyman to blame.

Graham told CNN on Tuesday that “there are 100 United States senators... I would say that 99 percent of us believe that the Russians did this, and we’re going to do something about it.”

"We’re going to have the hearings. We’re going to put sanctions together that hit [Russian President Vladimir] Putin as an individual and his inner circle for interfering in our election,” he said.

In the run-up to the face-off between GOP nominee Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, Washington claimed that some Democratic organizations were hacked by Russians in favor of Trump, a claim that has been rejected by Moscow.

Rodney Martin, a former US Congressional staffer, who spoke with Press TV on Wednesday, said there are two types of interests when it comes to allegations of Russian hacking.

“There are two diametrically different converging interests here, on the part of the Democrats that are alleging hacking interference, they are still in shock that they lost, because their hyenas in the media, were trumpeting Hillary Clinton and her neocon agenda,” Martin said, adding, but “when she lost, Democrats had to find some scapegoat and reason for her loss, and so the Democrats, which traditionally advocated good relations with Russia, all of a sudden, took their mask off, came and revealed themselves  as the warmongers they are.”

On the other hand, “the Republicans realized that they can get more mileage out of that, so the Republicans want this Russia phobia because they burned out the Islamophobia in the form of the war on terror to a large extent Americans have got tired of that,” he said.

“Both Republicans and Democrats have to have a boogeyman for their respective issues, Democrats have to have a boogeyman to blame their loss on,” Martin said.

“The Republicans have to have a boogeyman for their existence, so the Republicans need a boogeyman to play something against whether it’s Islamophobia, now Russia phobia, the former Soviet Union, or something, they cannot exist, their entire existence rests on having a boogeyman and being against because they have nothing to be for,” the analyst observed.

“That is the reason for Senator Graham’s assertion and calling for prosecutions and sanctions and things of that nature,” Martin noted.

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