Lindsey Graham: Rick Scott ‘won the election fair and square’

The machine recounts had not yet begun. But Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Saturday it's time for Gov. Rick Scott to be named Senator and that he should be in D.C. next week to take part in preliminary work before the start of the next Congress.

"He won the election fair and square," Graham said, using the past tense in a conference call with reporters arranged by Scott's campaign.

Referring to the slow pace of vote-counting in Broward, Graham said: "90,000 votes being reported after the polls close, well after 30 minutes, days after, just undercuts confidence in the electoral process … When it comes to these shenanigans, enough is enough."

Graham asserted that Broward is in "flagrant violation of Florida law," but he didn't cite a specific statutory violation other than Brenda Snipes' failure to post results 30 minutes after the polls close and every 45 minutes thereafter.

But Graham, known for his memorable tirade during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court, drew an analogy between that controversy and the election in Florida.

"Liberal Democrats in the 2018 cycle have had a disturbing pattern of trying to get outcomes and the law be damned," Graham said. "When it came to Judge Kavanaugh, they turned the rules upside down."