Senator Lindsey Graham Says Republicans Will Lose White House In 2016 If Immigration Bill Is Blocked [VIDEO]

In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told host David Gregory that he thought that Republican hopes to reclaim the White House in the 2016 presidential elections hinged on whether or not an immigration reform bill was passed. Graham is one of the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" senators who wrote the bill and pledged to stick together through legislative procedures to ensure that amendments from either side of the aisle would not defeat the bill's chances of passing.

"If we don't pass immigration reform," Graham said, "if we don't get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn't matter who you run in 2016. We're in a demographic death spiral as a party, and the only way to get back in the good graces with the Hispanic community, in my view, is to pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don't do that, it really doesn't matter who run in my view."

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"I would suggest a guy like Jeb Bush would have a really good chance in 2016," Graham added in response to a question about his own pick for a candidate. "A former governor or a governor. But you got Marco, you got Paul Ryan. The good news is we have a deep bench, and after eight years of President Obama's economic policies-and, quite frankly foreign policy-people are going to be looking around."

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The Washington Post reported on Friday that Republican and Democratic senators in the "Gang of Eight" blasted Senator Marco Rubio at a private meeting last week. Rubio helped co-author the bill as part of the team but in recent months has repeatedly said that if changes aren't made to it to stipulate more explicitly how Homeland Security should go about meeting the stated border-security goals, he will not vote for it. His cohorts on the team told him they were frustrated with his embrace of what they see as overly conservative measures and his failure to communicate with them over strategy and said it was putting the fate of the reform bill in jeopardy, according to the Post.

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Last week, the Senate passed the first of many procedural hurdles on the bill, voting 82-15 in favor of debating and later voting on the reform in the Senate floor.