Lindsey Graham – Foil And Hero Of The Right

The shocking and sudden death of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has left a gaping hole in the Senate. Love him or hate him, Graham was one of the last bastions of true bipartisanship in that once-collegial body. Modeling himself in part after his close friend, the late “maverick” Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Graham was someone who could send conservatives into fits one day and then have them praising his stance on another issue the next. He was anything but predictable, and was definitely one of a kind.

Although Graham considered himself a “Reagan Republican,” he certainly seemed to stray from that description on several occasions in his political life. Most notably, he tried working with Democrats on immigration reform in the early to mid-2000s, only to belatedly recognize that the Dems, even then, were not dealing in good faith on this issue. For these efforts, he earned the moniker “Grahamnesty” from Rush Limbaugh, and conservatives who slapped the “RINO” tag on him pointed to this issue as a major reason. However, Graham did show during this period that he was only willing to go so far to work with his colleagues in the opposition.

Another label given to Graham was “neocon” for his assertive support of U.S. military power projection throughout the world. To his critics, in a paraphrase of Will Rogers, it seemed that Graham never met a war he didn’t like, or didn't favor U.S. involvement in. In fact, toward the end of his Senate career and life, Graham was more involved than ever in a smorgasbord of international issues, not just those that involved American military forces. His last trip was to Ukraine to express continued U.S. support to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy regarding the seemingly interminable war with Russia.

If one wished to also label Graham as a political schizophrenic who could change his position on a dime, there would be no better place to start than his complicated relationship with President Trump. In his brief time as a presidential candidate during the 2016 election season, Graham had nothing but contempt for candidate Trump – using the left’s well-worn terms to describe Trump as race-baiting, xenophobic, and unfit to serve. He finished off his critique by calling Trump a “jackass” for Trump’s claim that Graham’s good friend John McCain was not a war hero, since he was caught and imprisoned by the enemy. Once Trump assumed office, however, Graham’s opinion of the president was transformed, and he became one of Trump’s biggest fans and influential advisors. McCain’s death in 2018, shortly after he was the deciding “no” vote on a bill to repeal Obamacare, may have freed Graham up to support Trump in this manner. Graham was one of the most influential and visible supporters of the president’s war on Iran.

However, all was not rosy in the Graham-Trump relationship. In 2024, Graham criticized Trump for not supporting a national ban on abortions. Trump responded by expressing his regret for supporting Graham’s reelection in 2020. Then, Graham went one ill-advised step further and introduced a bill to federalize control of abortion, complete with a 15-week window on performing the procedure. Apparently, Graham had no faith in the Supreme Court’s ability to overturn Roe v. Wade and return control of abortion laws to the states. Graham also took issue with Trump’s January 2025 decision to pardon January 6^th defendants who pleaded guilty and/or were convicted of violent crimes, despite the fact that in most cases the charges were overblown and the defendants were denied most, if not all, of their due process.

Perhaps Graham’s finest hour, at least from a conservative’s point of view, was his no-holds-barred lambasting of Senate Democrats for their contemptuous treatment of Supreme Court nominee and now Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Arguably, Graham’s impassioned speech as Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee cut through the fog of the specious accusations leveled at Kavanaugh and saved his nomination. On the other hand, Graham voted affirmatively on the nomination of liberal Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, stating that, in his opinion, judicial nominees should not be opposed based on their philosophical positions. Too bad he couldn’t convince his “friends” from the other side of the aisle to adopt this attitude toward conservative judges.

All in all, Lindsey Graham exemplified what true public service should look like in his long career in Congress – from helping initiate an impeachment investigation on President Clinton while a junior congressman, to being one of the leading Senators at the time of his death. Although he did and said some things that drove conservatives crazy, he was a rarity in today’s political jungle – a politician who stayed mostly honest in an increasingly corrupt world. He should be well remembered for that.