When Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) ran for president in 2016, he was one of my favorites in the GOP field. I especially liked his military background, and thought, “Hmm, here’s a principled Republican I maybe could vote for.” Boy, was I wrong then.
Since then, his stature has shrunk to mouse-size. That was before his flip-flopping on Trump’s impeachment, ramming through Justice Ginsberg’s replacement just before an election, and now Biden’s highly qualified Supreme Court nominee.
He has just proved, again, he’s nothing more than an unprincipled, hypocritical partisan hack who values party loyalty above character and country.
Graham, who just months ago voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to a federal appeals court, announced on Thursday, March 31, 2022, he would vote against her Supreme Court nomination. Why? He said, “My decision is based upon her record of judicial activism, flawed sentencing methodology regarding child pornography cases and a belief Judge Jackson will not be deterred by the plain meaning of the law when it comes to liberal causes.” (Read story here.) These are baseless GOP talking points, and this is partisan hackery of the worst sort.
But that’s not all. Graham is pouting because his preferred candidate, Judge J. Michelle Childs (who’s from South Carolina), wasn’t picked (Biden did consider her). And he threw a childish tantrum and stormed out of Jackson’s confirmation hearing after getting into an argument with a Democratic senator (see story here).
Voting “yes” on Jackson again would have been a super-easy vote for Graham, because she’s certain to be confirmed, so his vote is only symbolic and a vote for her would’ve cost him and his party nothing politically.
But Graham feels he has to stick to the party line, no matter what it is, and the negativity of a “no” vote that has no practical effect but conveys powerful symbolism. He’s capable of thinking for himself, but not of casting a principled vote. And that defines him as a partisan hack.
Unless you vote in South Carolina, you can’t do anything about it, and that state’s voters won’t do anything about it. They re-elected him again in 2020. Which tells you something about them, too.
Photo: Graham (standing at left) storming out of Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing on March 22, 2022
