Lindsey Graham and his descent into Trumpism

Lindsey Graham is the saddest story in Washington, wrote Frank Bruni, an opinion writer in The New York Times. This is an excellent chronology describing hos Senator Graham has descended into the "hell", the work he has attributed others. Look inward, Senator, as you read the Bruni opinion!

Senator Lindsey Graham descended into the vortex of political ambition

Senator Lindsey Graham and his relentless pursuit of ambition has caused him to be the person he defined Donald Trump to be and the process of "going to hell"

The Brett Kavanaugh nomination is now over.  It was an especially ugly episode of a reality -show presidency to the Supreme Court that degraded almost everyone who was swept up with it and the many characters left staggering away from it looking worse than ever.

That's Senator Lindsey Graham.  He is at the head of the pack of the degraded.  Sadly, it's Graham we hear talking and talking and talking even more, in committee rooms and on stages and before television cameras that he rushed to in the way a toddler chases soap bubbles.  

Graham's words are whichever ones guarantee a major role and a powerful patron, which means, that these days, he sounds like a more articulate echo of his golf buddy- Donald Trump.

That wouldn't, by itself, be cause to dwell on Graham. Washington is lousy with lackeys, and not even the maddest of kings thins their ranks.

But, Graham is weirdly special. Because, Bruni, wrote, "I can't think of another Republican whose journey from anti-Trump outrage to pro-Trump obsequiousness was quite so illogical or half as sad, and his conduct during the war over Kavanaugh completed it.  For Donald Trump, he fought overtime, he fought nasty and he fought without nuance.

In so doing, he distilled our rotten politics- its transactional nature, its tribal fury, its hysterical pitch- as neatly as anybody in the current Congress does.

Has a diva at La Scala ever delivered an aria as overwrought as the one that Graham performed on the day when both Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee?  I doubt it.

"Boy, you all want power," GRaham, who serves on the committee, railed at his Democratic colleagues, accusing them of ginning up, accusations against Kavanaugh.  "God I hope you never get it,"  Because Graham and his fellow Republicans exercise it so much more responsibly?  Because they're so principled themselves? I guess that's why hey minimize Russian interference in our elections, indulge Trump's bromances with Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte in teh Philippines and Kim Jong-un in North Vietnam; and smile upon his mendacity, misogyny, racism and unchecked greed. They're modeling integrity in government.

"You want this sean?", Graham yelled to them. "I hope you never get it."  No, Senator Graham, you do more than hop. You cheat.  LEt me introduce you to Merrick Garland, a figure far less partisan than Kavanaugh and thus much more more deserving of a seat on the highest court in the land. You and your Republican colleagues in the Senate, every bit as desirous of power a Democrats are, crushed him and the fact that it didn't involve an attack on his reputation doesn't diminish its ruthlessness.  

"This is not a job interview," Graham told Kavanaugh, soothing him.  "This is hell."

Interesting word choice.  I remember when Graham used "hell" in a different context.  This was back in December 2015. It was when he was campaigning vainly for the Republican presidential nomination, saw Trump clearly and didn't suck up to him.

"You know how you make American great again?", Graham said back then.."Tell Donald Trump to go to hell."

"If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed," he said then, apparently referring to the Republican Party's prospects in 2016.  "And, we will deserve it."  He called Trump the "world's biggest jackass".  He said that choosing between Trump and Senator Ted Cruz who survived much deeper into the party's 2016 presidential primary than did Graham, was like deciding whether to be shot or poisoned.  Trump returned these kindnesses by publicly divulging Graham's mobile phone number and forcing him to get a new one.

There were sound policy reasons for Graham's revulsion. At the risk of alienating some of the conservatives in South Carolina who routinely voted for him, he had pressed for sensible immigration reform, the kind that didn't involve ethnic slurs, the forced separation of children from their parents and border walls. Graham was one of the Senate's most ardent hawks and Trump was dissing foreign military interventions, damning NATO, pimping for Putin and peddling isolationism.

There were also personal reasons for Graham's revulsion.  Graham's closest ally and contant companion in teh SEnate, a man he claimed to revere beyond measure, was John McCain. And Trump, at the beginning of his campaign, bizarrely and grotesquely mocked McCain's long, brutal years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. Trump's belittline of Senator McCain never ceased, and GRaham took prper offense, at leasst for a while.  Then, Trump became president, started inviting Graham to play golf and Graham parted ways with his nerae and his spine. What beautiful fairways yu have, Mr. Trump. What a virile tee shot.

That's the sad part, wrote Bruni.  And this is the absolutely pathetic twist:  Senator McCain, battling brain cancer, stopped spending much time in Washington, and aw his friend's health deteriorated, Graham's ardor and cheering for Trump intensified. Senator McCain, you see, wasn't just Graham's friend. He was his road to greater relevance. And, Trump presented a veritable expressway.  So, Graham switched vehicles and directions, and pressed the pedal to the metal.

He went from defending Jeff Sessions to pushing him toward the exit, from sounding the alarm about Russia to hyperventilating about the Justice Department and the FBI, for calling Trump a "kook" to savaging the media for portraying him as one, from wanting to put Trump on a bed of nails to fluffing his pillow and smoothing his duvet. At times, he gushes so much that he makes Rudy Giuliani look withholding.

Shocker of shockers:  Graham has now a nearly open line to Donald Trump and he gets his calls returned.  White House reporters routinely mention this and him. 

Graham has all the television time that he could ever want.  He even got a prime spot at The Atlantic a Festival in Washington, where he was interviewed by the magazine's editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. Moreover, the Style section of The Washington Post wrote a feature about him.

Graham claims that he's serving a higher purpose by softening Donald Trump's caustic stances where they sorely need to be softened, but that certainly has not happened with the immigration debacle.  Graham notes that he does chastise Trump, occasionally.

But, his smearing of Christine Blasey Ford and the Democrats who championed her was so vehement that he earned public raves from Giuliani, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Eric and Trump and right winger San Hannity.

They and Donald Trump are the Graham constituency now. 

So, what's the new Graham agenda? According to a few people who know him well, he's auditioning to be attorney general.

Him or Sessions? It's like deciding whether to be shot or poisoned, and to plunder a quote from a quintessential Washington hack, God I hope he never gets it.


Maine Writer- Lindsey Graham has proven he has become a lock step Trumpzi.