One of the endless parlor games in politics over the last few years is “what in the world happened to Lindsey Graham?” The idea seems to be that he was once a straight-shooting maverick in the mold of his mentor John McCain and he’s now either got some elaborate 12 dimensional chess game going with Donald Trump to “keep him in line” or Trump is blackmailing him. It’s understandable. If you believe that he was once a straight shooter and you see him now, you have to wonder. But I think he’s just a True Believer.
Here he is this morning issuing threats of retribution against Kamala Harris:
During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Graham first pointed out that former President Donald Trump told him that while he’s “ready to move on and rebuild the Republican Party” following his second impeachment acquittal, he’s also “mad at some folks” in the party
“I think Sen. McConnell’s speech, he got a load off a chest obviously but unfortunately he put a load on the back of Republicans. That speech you will see in 2022 campaigns,” Graham declared, referencing the Senate minority leader’s denunciation of Trump’s “dereliction of duty” in inciting an insurrection.
Graham, a loyal Trump defender who advised the president’s impeachment legal team, went on to decry the impeachment sequel as “unconstitutional” and an “affront to the rule of law” before warning that Republicans will be looking for payback in the near future.
“And if you use this model, I don’t know how Kamala Harris doesn’t get impeached if the Republicans take over the House,” Graham said. “Because she actually bailed out rioters and one of the rioters went back to the streets and broke somebody’s head open. So we’ve opened Pandora’s Box here and I’m sad for the country.”
While Harris tweeted support of the Minnesota Freedom Fund in June, there is no evidence that she bailed anyone out.
Wallace would eventually corner Graham over remarks the pro-Trump senator made the day after the Capitol riot, noting that Graham said at the time that Trump allowed the riot to happen and “the president needs to understand that his actions were the problem, not the solution.”
“It sure sounds like you’re saying that he violated his oath of office,” the Fox News anchor said.
“No, I think what he did is he encourage his supporters throughout the country to fight like hell to take back an election he thought was stolen—a lot of politicians have said that,” the Republican senator responded.
Graham, meanwhile, wrapped up his interview with some over-the-top cheerleading for Trump and the ex-president’s family, claiming Trump and his daughter-in-law Lara were the “future” of the Republican Party. He further asserted that Lara Trump was the “biggest winner” of the impeachment trial as it made her the favorite in 2022’s North Carolina Senate race.
He has just been re-elected, Trump is out of office, and unless he really is being blackmailed, I can’t see a good reason for him to do this except that he just really likes the guy. It’s possible that all of his bootlicking has made it difficult for him to figure out how to leave the cult, but he seems genuinely enthusiastic about being the biggest Trumpian asshole (in strong competition with Ted Cruz) in the US Senate. I think he’s getting off on it.
Here’s CNN’s Harry Enten suggesting that Graham isn’t alone:
A lot of critics of former President Donald Trump want GOP senators to “show some spine.” They think the big reason they have stayed with Trump through impeachment is because they’re scared of him.
There’s good reason to be worried about going against Trump, given how popular he is among the Republican base. But I’d argue this explanation is at least somewhat incomplete. A lot of GOP senators may be willing to vote with Trump because they aren’t against him. They, like their voters, may really like him and his policies or believe he didn’t commit an impeachable offense.
This theory is probably hard for a lot of Trump critics to take, but it does make sense. Trump retrospective approval ratings remain in the 80s with Republicans. A lot of Republican lawmakers are likely reflected in that high approval rating.
Most Republican senators are either retiring or aren’t up for reelection until at least 2024. In fact, at least 34 of 50 GOP senators are not running for reelection in 2022 at this point. (It could be more based on retirements.)That means there would be at least three years until the senators who don’t retire would face electoral consequences for any votes against Trump.Three years is an eternity in politics. Don’t believe me? Ask Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
McConnell’s favorable ratings with Republicans nationwide plummeted from the 50s to the low 30s in 2017, after Trump and the Kentucky Republican tussled over their efforts to end the Affordable Care Act. After a little more than a year, McConnell’s favorable ratings jumped back up into the 50s. He benefited from pushing through the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018.
Other Republican members of Congress have shown you can repair seemingly broken relationships with Trump. Others have demonstrated that you don’t need to be Trump’s biggest fan to win primaries.
There are likely to be many more battles in President Joe Biden’s administration. Politics isn’t static. There’s no guarantee that votes on impeachment will be the determinative factor in primaries well down the road.
Keep in mind that most Republican senators voted against objections to the Electoral College results in January. They did so even as their voters believe, falsely, that there was wide-scale election fraud.Republican senators have shown a willingness to go against Trump. So the idea that they aren’t willing to in this situation just because they fear him seems a little hard to swallow.
So, to me, a plausible possibility remains what I posited at the top: Maybe many GOP senators actually really like Trump or at least buy his arguments on impeachment.
Why would they be any different than the rest of the Trump cult? The GOP alternate universe has been operating for a long time. Fox and Breitbart and Drudge and talk radio were on the same page for decades, spewing out disinformation and lies. They were certainly disseminating a worldview that didn’t accurately reflect reality.
Just because these elected Republicans have access to real information doesn’t mean they believe it or even look at it. Many of them live in the same bubble as their constituents. And they are happy to stay there.
That’s not to say that a good number of them are just cynical opportunists and/or cowardly weasels who care about nothing more than keeping their jobs at all costs regardless of whether they are required to worship a demagogue and sell out the constitution to do it. I’d guess there are more of them than the other, to be honest. But there are true believers among them, for sure.
There is something about Trump that a whole lot of people really, really like and it’s got nothing to do with politics because Trump knows nothing about politics, even now. This is cult stuff. Lindsey Graham and a number of the others seem no different than the most ardent Red Hats at a Trump rally. He’s their Dear Leader.