Choosing between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) once said, is like choosing between being "shot or poisoned."
But after Trump's near-dominant showing on Super Tuesday, Graham appears to have made his choice. In an interview Tuesday with CBS's Charlie Rose, Graham said: "Ted Cruz is not my favorite by any means, but … we may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump."
The Texas senator, who won Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska on Tuesday, is simply the best of two bad choices, Graham indicated. Graham recently joked how Cruz and his obstructionist ways are so despised in the Senate that "if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you."
But Trump is worse, Graham said. He is a "race-baiting, xenophobic bigot" who is dangerous for both the Republican Party's electoral hopes and future growth, Graham has said. In his interview with Rose, Graham predicted Republicans with Donald Trump as their nominee would lose to Hillary Clinton, thanks in part to the party's inability -- out of stubbornness, really, Graham called it -- to take positions that would welcome Hispanics into their party.
"We are in a demographic death spiral," he said.
It's not like Cruz has a great track record on immigration, either. He sides with Trump on building a wall along the Mexican border and deporting some 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.
[Where the Republican candidates stand on mass deportation and other big issues]
In Tuesday's interview, Rose asked Graham to confirm he thinks the party should rally around Cruz.
Graham's answer echoed what most of the Republican Party establishment is probably thinking the day after Super Tuesday:
"I can't believe I would say yes," Graham said, "but yes."
