Personal Integrity and the Puzzle of Lindsey Graham
We didn't expect a lot of our current partisan politics, but to be honest we hoped for more. The Republicans in the Senate refused to convict Trump of inciting an insurrection this weekend and while this wasn't particularly surprising, it really should be.
As we laid out last week, the future of the GOP does not lie with Trumpism, but instead with a reinvigorated conservatism animated by actual principles to counter the radicalism of the rising Democratic wave. While we maintain a radically moderate position between these two parties, being neither conservative nor progressive ourselves for reasons we will discuss more next week, we still think it's a pretty bad thing for America, for the GOP, and for radical moderation that the trial did not end in a conviction.
We still think it's a pretty bad thing for America, for the GOP, and for radical moderation that the trial did not end in a conviction.
But what's more puzzling to us is why the hell it didn't? McConnell, while pretending to appeal to a constitutional interpretation that doesn't make any sense at least finished the weekend with a fiery speech that clearly indicated he believed Trump guilty. (As a brief aside, McConnell's understanding of the Constitution assumes there's no way for the Senate to prevent truly dangerous demagogues from running for re-election as long as they're already out of office when their crimes are found out. That's a bizarre interpretation of the disqualification power, whatever your other commitments might be. But leaving that aside....)
McConnell's condemnation of Trump is ultimately a weak one, leaving to rhetoric what he should have done procedurally in a way that actually mitigated the danger moving forward, but at least he pointed in the direction of truth and justice. Why he chose to point toward truth instead of actually moving toward it is unclear, but as we've pointed out before, virtue signaling does matter, however weak it may be.
What's weirder and more confusing is what the hell Lindsey Graham is doing and why. Graham used to be a fairly traditional conservative GOP member, one animated by the principles of small government (except when it comes to outlandish defense budgets), who brought a reasonably thoughtful, lawyerly and relatively bipartisan approach to public service. Despite resisting Trump throughout the primaries and referring to him as a "little jerk" and a "kook", Graham has now fully thrown his weight behind the phenomenon that is Trumpism in a way that is both mind-boggling and disturbing. We are not the first to point out this puzzling shift (see here and here for earlier dissections).
While these earlier commentaries explained Graham's abasement via the necessities of the election cycle, it's clear from interviews this week that can't be what's really going on now. Graham is safe for six more years. He doesn't need Trump or the Trump kids for re-election. And yet here he is defending Trump and in fact claiming that "this MAGA movement needs to continue" and that "Trump plus is the way back in 2022." Even more bizarre is the claim he makes here that Lara Trump "represents the future of the Republican party" and that he'll support her possible run for the Senate in North Carolina. This is even more confusing, given the reality that the Trumps in general stand to make his job much more difficult than it would otherwise be by riling up parts of the base that Graham would much rather forget existed. So the question remains: what the hell happened to Lindsey Graham?
We have a couple hypotheses for the transition, all in the spirit of QAnon. Could Graham's body have been taken over by a Trump-developed robot? We can rule this explanation out given that the Trump Organization has consistently demonstrated its inability to engage in any innovation or value creation that doesn't involve tax dodging. Is it possible the Trump organization knows of some dirty secret and is blackmailing Graham for his support? This seems more in line with the way the Trumps operate (see here, here, and here for starters). So we'll keep the blackmail option open, at least for now. It is also possible that the Trumps are holding Graham's family dog or mistress or his Bronze Star hostage in exchange for ever more revolting groveling and abasement, but in that case why doesn't Graham simply call 911? We have institutions for this after all! Perhaps the explanation is that QAnon got it right all along and the real Graham is stuck inside a Wayfair cabinet, just waiting to be set free, while his alter-ego hologram pursues global domination for a shadowy Trumpist deep state involved in child sex trafficking. Weirder things have happened!
More seriously, the best explanation for Graham's bizarre voluntary public humiliation is probably the one offered by Evan McMullin in the interview above (relinked here), namely that Graham wants to win back the Senate and (maybe) the House in 2022 and needs the Trumps on board. While this explanation makes a little more sense than our robot/hologram/Wayfair hypothesis, it's still a bizarre way of kicking the can down the road. As McMullin points out and as we argued last week, the GOP will have to undergo a painful transition period no matter what happens, and the sooner the better for the strength of the party moving forward.
The GOP will have to undergo a painful transition period no matter what happens, and the sooner the better for the strength of the party moving forward.
But clearly Graham doesn't want this transition to take place now, in part because any transition period will result in short term losses for the GOP before they get their legs back under them. But Graham's dalliance with MAGA and the extremism it flirts with is an incredibly risky strategy and one Graham must himself be aware is both unsustainable and fraught with immediate dangers, the Capitol riots being only the most obvious example. So all this begs the question for Graham and others like him. What would it take for him to do the right thing? What would it take for him to do the right thing for his party, for the United States, and for the future of republican government? What would it take for him to lead?
What would it take for him to lead?
In the end, we can't answer that question for Graham or others like him. We can, however, applaud those like Senators Murkowski, Collins, Sasse, Toomey, Burr, and Cassidy who are working to put the GOP on a path to sanity, to principled leadership, and to a better and more thoughtful conservatism. Given that at least some of them are leaving office altogether, the numbers don't bode well for the future of a principled GOP in the short term. But at the very least we can recognize and applaud personal integrity when we see it and give credit where credit is due. And we can remember this moment in 2022, when the GOP is ever-more fractured by conspiracy theories and extremism and nativism, that there were in fact some people who stood in the breach and tried to lead. It may not get us anywhere concrete, but it gives us something to look to and a model for moving forward. Graham, on the other hand, will go down in history as a principled man who sold his soul for political gain. As a result, he became a man without principles. A politician, not a leader. A groveling yes-man instead of a courageous maverick. Only Graham can decide whether it's worth it. Somehow we doubt it.
What about you? Do you think Graham has been taken hostage and is being held in a Wayfair cabinet? Or do you think the blackmail theory holds more water? Tell us in the comments!