It seems like only yesterday that the New York Times was celebrating Lindsey Graham as a moderate party-bucking maverick:
âI may introduce a constitutional amendment that changes the rules if you have a child here,â Graham said during an interview with Fox Newsâ Greta Van Susteren. âBirthright citizenship I think is a mistake, that we should change our Constitution and say if you come here illegally and you have a child, that childâs automatically not a citizen.â
Graham has moved far to the right on immigration in general ever since Harry Reid and Obama threw him under the bus/slapped him in the face/hurt his fee-fees by doing whatever bad thing David Brooks says they did to him (I can’t remember what it was anymore).
I have nothing against Lindsey Graham and I understand that he has primaries to worry about. In the end, like other Republicans, he votes with his party when the chips are down. The insistence on viewing members of Congress as fully autonomous, free-standing objects makes for good copy, but it’s nothing more than a Brooksian fairy tale.
That’s not to say that Graham isn’t more independent than most other Senators — this Washington Monthly piece on his “perilous bipartisanship” gives an even-handed account of his Senatorial proclivities — but how often as he actually voted with Democrats on a major bill during this session of Congress?