This piece about Lindsey Graham (via this tweet) is really good, and this Steve Schmidt quote is a perfect summing up:
“People try to analyze Lindsey through the prism of the manifest inconsistencies that exist between things that he used to believe and what he’s doing now,” Schmidt says. “The way to understand him is to look at what’s consistent. And essentially what he is in American politics is what, in the aquatic world, would be a pilot fish: a smaller fish that hovers about a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its detritus. That’s Lindsey. And when he swam around the McCain shark, broadly viewed as a virtuous and good shark, Lindsey took on the patina of virtue. But wherever the apex shark is, you find the Lindsey fish hovering about, and Trump’s the newest shark in the sea. Lindsey has a real draw to power — but he’s found it unattainable on his own merits.”
The author, Mark Binelli, doesn’t find any evidence of Graham’s long-rumored homosexuality, for what that’s worth, though someone of Graham’s age and background could have that buried so deep that nobody would find it. He does find evidence that Graham is a lonely man with a fucked up family history who glories in being a Senator, one who will do anything to keep his job, though the latter is already manifestly obvious to anyone who’s watched him the last couple of years.
The piece is worth a read for some insight into the character of a lot of politicians.
senyordave
Moscow Mitch, Leningrad Lindsay… Anyway you slice it, a bunch of treasonous bastards who will have to be judged by history since they won’t get the punishments they so richly deserve.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve had that thought, Lindsey’s aged a lot in the last couple year
that phrase is a shot right to the heart of the matter, and of Lindsey
mrmoshpotato
OT – Billy Graham ad up above “I have hope in America because of Jesus Christ.”
Silly Billy, that’s not why so many of us have been exclaiming “Jesus Christ!” lately.
germy
The illustration by Victor Juhasz really captures Graham’s essence.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yelling like a deranged lunatic at the confirmation hearing for a blackout drunk college rapist must take years off your life.
Mike in NC
Good article on the spineless Lindsey Graham. Being in the US Senate is his entire world. He couldn’t exist outside of that. Bending the knee to Fat Bastard is the price he’s willing to pay.
hilts
Lindsey Graham is irredeemable scum and I wish him only the worst.
Another day, another open letter with a bunch of signatures:
Nearly 300 lawyers signed their names on an open letter to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday that criticizes Moscow Mitch for open dereliction of his duty to do “impartial justice” at President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
The letter concluded by saying that McConnell’s “notion that the impeachment process does not have judicial character and implicitly gives him and other senators free rein to conduct the trial as biased political partisans is indefensible.”
Excerpts
h/t https://lawandcrime.com/impeachment/hundreds-of-lawyers-send-open-letter-to-senate-criticizing-mcconnells-refusal-to-do-impartial-justice/
Full Text of Open Letter to the US Senate
https://www.scribd.com/document/442018569/Open-Letter-to-the-United-States-Senate#from_embed?campaign=VigLink&ad_group=xxc1xx&source=hp_affiliate&medium=affiliate
Ksmiami
@mrmoshpotato: the GOP has lost the plot- the Whole Party is bad for America
MattF
Graham makes it clear that he doesn’t think licking Trump’s ass is that big a deal— particularly if it provides job security. He’s a bit vexed that some people don’t see it that way.
mrmoshpotato
@Ksmiami: Yup. Since at least 1980.
John Revolta
Mrs. Revolta and I may be moving to S Carolina later this year. One of the attractions for me would be voting this POS out of office.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MattF: I take some amusement in the fact that he knows that everyone he knows is sending this article around to each other and talking about it, that every reporter he talks to, every staffer, every colleague will have at least seen the Schmidt quote a hundred times on twitter. Every barista, every waiter and half the people he passes on the street know that “power was unattainable on his own merits”
senyordave
Can you imagine what it is like to be a person who sacrificed their integrity for… Donald Trump. Hopefully Lindsay will roast in hell.
mrmoshpotato
@senyordave: “Uncle Lindsay’s house is weird. He doesn’t even have a mirror in the bathroom.”
Mandarama
This article was so much more depressing than my theory that Graham is under extreme threat of revelations from the Russians, the Trump campaign, or whatever was in Pecker’s safe. For me, it’s much harder to take all this posturing from a basic venal asshole. I mean, I hate the posturing either way, but if these are his motivations, I have to now roll my eyes over how boring they are.
The banality of evil, etc., etc. Sigh.
Just One More Canuck
Paul Krugman had this to say about Trump and Graham
“From his first days in office, Trump has acted on the apparent belief that he could easily intimidate foreign governments — that they would quickly fold and allow themselves to be humiliated. That is, he imagined that he faced a world of Lindsey Grahams, willing to abandon all dignity at the first hint of a challenge.”
kindness
I don’t give a shit about Lindsey being a closeted gay man. I care that he’s an amoral hypocrite, especially wrt to impeachment when you look at what he said during Clinton’s and what he’s saying now about Trump.
Martin
@senyordave: He never had any, FWIW.
[edit] Sorry, the below isn’t directed at senyordave – I should have made it a separate comment, my apologies.
And I’ll raise a note of objection that there’s a wide range of asexuality out there. Just because he’s not married doesn’t mean he’s gay. He simply may not be sexually attracted to anyone, or he may need that romantic relationship to trigger that, and a lot of people reject the romance because the sexual attraction isn’t there when the sexual attraction won’t happen until the romantic relationship is well established (which never happens).
In other words, traditional notions of romance and sexuality fuck up a lot of things, not just normative LGBTQ people. Let’s not further that damage ourselves.
artem1s
I like to imagine McCain is making nightly visits to Lindsey by now. Apparently he hasn’t gotten the message yet.
catclub
isn’t that a whole lot of TMI?
Kent
South Carolina?
I’ve got extended family who live in Hilton Head. I can’t think of a Trumpier place. It’s a hell hole of rich old white conservative golfers who spend their waking moments raging about the latest FOX news meme and getting pissy about the poor quality of local help.
I view places like South Carolina and Hilton Head as geographic “sacrificial anodes” like you would put on a saltwater boat. You have to have them to suck up the toxicity so it doesn’t invest the rest of the body politic. They do serve that purpose.
Interesting article though. In the time it took me to read it there are 20 new comments here. I had no idea that Graham came from Deliverance level poor white southern trash. Usually these types of white southern politicians come from the Confederate aristocracy and are coddled upwards through the rich white affirmative action programs that exist in the Deep South as evidenced by the white sorority and frat system in Southern universities.
piratedan
on my best days, I believe that Democrats will retake the oval office, the house and the upper chamber. After they go about unfucking the damage wrought, I hope that there will be still enough seething animosity to start taking these “lesser” criminals to task.. Violation of campaign finance, perjury and treason, to start with. Time to start culling this particular strain from politics. At the same time reining in the propaganda works that exist on our free media and social media. I hate thinking that we have to become our brothers keeper in these days, but its apparently obvious that our current set of brethren would just as soon burn it all down as long as they can be the last vagrant under the overpass with a curtain rod.
Roger Moore
@senyordave:
I think you’re missing the thrust of that Schmidt quote. Graham sacrificed his integrity a long time ago, at least as long ago as the Clinton impeachment, and probably as soon as he went into politics. He was able to hide it for a while because he was following a man who had some integrity, but that’s not at all the same as having integrity himself.
senyordave
@Roger Moore: My point up until Trump it was conjecture that Graham had sacrificed his integrity. He proved it to the whole world with Trump.
Kent
@Roger Moore: This.
There are people who sacrificed actual integrity for Donald Trump. A shitload of them I’m sure. General Mattis comes to mind. Lindsey is not one of them. He never had any.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: It’s a shame that this is probably too long for a rotating tag.
J R in WV
@Kent:
I would have suspected he was Southern Deliverance level poor white trash just based upon his hate-filled facial expression and spittle-filled voice when berating and threatening an honest witness. Although I must say I don’t much care for the expression “poor white trash” even when discussing a member of that set.
WaterGirl
@senyordave:
I am nominating that as a rotating tag.
joel hanes
More of a remora
Betty Cracker
Graham’s challenger for the U.S. Senate seat, Jaime Harrison, on Graham:
That’s exactly the right way to approach a campaign like this. It’s unlikely to work — South Carolina gonna South Carolina. But every now and then, lightning strikes.
cmorenc
A curious phenomenon of Southern society going back to when known homosexuals were harshly shunned is the presence in nearly every town of androgynous never-married males who are well-accepted in “polite society”, even though everyone suspects they are closeted gays. A firm requisite of keeping their accepted, respected status is…to never leave that closet door cracked open enough to permit any views of what’s really inside, other than that they are in their mid-40s, never married, never having had any known serious girlfriends. When they are accompanied by a woman at some sort of social event, the vibe is more like they’re taking their sister out than a girlfriend. Privately, most folks speculate the person is a tightly closeted gay, but in the absence of any proof, are at least willing to continue to sustain the fiction that the person isn’t gay.
Lindsey Graham fits that paradigm perfectly.
catclub
The mis-sent US Military letter to Iraq is not dead yet – according to the Iraqi PM’s office.
slate link It seems every more confusing.
TPM also has the ‘no backsies’ response from the Iraqi PM’s office
joel hanes
@cmorenc:
“confirmed bachelors”
sdhays
@senyordave: Small point, but no one sacrificed their integrity for Donald Dump. Many people simply revealed that their reputation of having some integrity was entirely misplaced.
lollipopguild
@artem1s: Dickens like Shakespeare understood humans about as well as any writers ever have.
John Revolta
@cmorenc: Exactly. And a whole bunch of guys in town keep asking themselves, “Why does that homosexual keep sucking my dick?”
jl
@catclub: Much of Iraqi government is supported by Iran, friendly to Iran, wants closer ties to Iran. Much of the Iraqi government strenuously disagrees and resents Iran pushing influence in Iraq.
It is no surprise at all that Iranian allies in Iraqi government would use the bizarre botch of the letter to make sit for US as difficult as possible.
John Revolta
@Kent: SC is pretty red still, but it ain’t all Hilton Head either. In fact Hilton Head:S Carolina::West Palm Beach:Florida.
Betty Cracker
@cmorenc: My grandma was from South Carolina, and one of her male cousins never married nor had a girlfriend anyone heard about. He had an amazing flair for antiques restoration. Everyone assumed he was gay, but there was never any proof of it. He was a pillar of the small town community where he lived, and everyone loved him. That said, I’m sure they’d have turned on him like a pack of rabid meth-weasels if he openly had a boyfriend (if indeed he WAS gay).
MattF
@catclub: Alexandra Petri circulates a regrettable draft of her column.
catclub
@MattF: that is well done.
Jay C
@catclub:
The interesting part (well, today’s anyway) of the “Seely Letter Saga” is that the Iraqi government* released a copy of said letter translated into Arabic, which they said they had received along with the English “original”.
They also said that the first translation was “incorrect” (Treaty of Wuchale, anyone?), and that they had then received a corrected (and accurate) version.
And then, were told “never mind….”
If war, peace, blood and lives weren’t at stake it would be ludicrously amusing….
*So proving it was actually “delivered”
Kent
@J R in WV: What’s a better descriptive term? Hillbillies? They are all derogative. But there is something worthy of derision about all the poor white southerners who have embraced ignorance and poverty in order to fly their racist flag. Rather than chose to form any kind of solidarity with their non-white neighbors to better their communities and states. I don’t really know South Carolina but I spent a decade living in Waco TX which has it’s own horrible and racist history.
As a teacher in a large and diverse public HS in TX it was almost always the white kids from this background who were the worst to deal with. Never the Hispanic kids and rarely the black kids. Almost without exception it was poor white rural kids who were my worst and most difficult students. And without exception they got it from their parents.
Patricia Kayden
@hilts: I wish there were consequences for Mitch’s disregard of protocol but alas he has already gotten away with so much b.s. that I fear nothing will happen to him now.
ewrunning
Kent
@cmorenc: I don’t think it’s just Southern society. I have a never married aunt who is about 75 or 80 now. She worked her whole life as a nurse in Portland. I remember growing up she would always be taking these long adventure travel trips to Europe and Asia with her “girlfriends”. Since my father’s family comes from fundamentalist Christian roots, no one really ever said anything or asked. But all my cousins just nod knowingly. She was everyone’s favorite aunt. But she did everything short of own a golden retriever to meet the stereotypes. That generation was very much “don’t ask, don’t tell”
Kent
@Patricia Kayden: The consequences SHOULD be that all that Senate “protocol” is dead and buried and won’t be resurrected when Dems retake the Senate. But I’m not that hopeful.
JaySinWA
If the new theory of the case of the 180 Graham did after golfing with Trump is not kompromat but promises, I am not quite buying it. What can Trump offer that he is reliable enough to deliver that would bind Graham so tightly. Or conversely that he can scavenge by being close?
There may be carrots floating around that I am not seeing, but my guess is there is still a pretty big stick driving Graham.
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: I had a great uncle in Ohio who lived on the farm with his mom all his life. And never married. The story I heard was that he was changed by being in the D-Day invasion… :-(
I don’t really care about Graham’s sexuality or lack thereof. Even if he’s being hypocritical about it – people aren’t machines.
It’s his policies and his votes that are the issue. South Carolina, and the country, deserve much better.
Cheers,
Scott.
Barbara
@Kent: I had six great aunts who never married. There were 12 children between my grandmother’s and grandfather’s family, and only three married. My grandparents married each other, and a great uncle also married. Two girls and one boy in one family, and one boy and four girls in the other family never married. One child died young. The unmarried boys had severe mental health issues. The reason why some of the girls didn’t marry was to care for a brother. But one of my great aunts told me that when she was young, women really understood that getting married was accompanied by a fundamental loss of independence, and she did not want that. So the unmarried aunts traveled and never lacked for companionship through their many nieces and nephews, and then, the next generation that included me. I think the calculation was different for men, for obvious reasons.
bjacques
Graham is the creature that hovers around the ass of Jabba The Hutt.
John Revolta
Well we just created dozens of new martyrs today. This just got way way worse. Thanks Trump.
trollhattan
@joel hanes:
“The heartbreak of remora”
catclub
exactly
laura
All the way accross the country I can smell trumps ass all over Lindsay Graham’s face.
He is a man so lacking in principle and yet so histrionic when presuming to hold others to a standard of accountability – see clinton impeachment, the entirety of the Obama Adminitration, justice gangbang.
chris
@Barbara: Hey, I had two of those! We called them the antique aunties and I miss them every day. One went off to San Francisco in 1950(!), got her MA in library science and worked at one of the big Toronto hospitals. The other got a PhD in Social Work at UChicago in 1959(!) and worked for the Ontario government. They both lived, not far from each other, in the “gay ghetto” in downtown TO. Never knew or cared if they were gay but greatly admired their fierce independence.
laura
@Barbara: single girl, single girl, going dressed fine. Married girl, married girl, rocks the cradle and cries, oh, rocks the cradle and cries.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kent:
My mother’s favorite cousin was a lesbian living *openly* in 60s Dallas TX. It was not talked about with the children (I and my 5 siblings) but we made regular visits to Aunt Bobby June’s and Maxine’s house. I say *openly* because even if they were living together and it became obvious to me by the time I was 13/14/15, I have no idea what story they told neighbors, workmates, etc so people could pretend it wasn’t sin right next door.
Mandalay
Yet another thread where armchair experts are blathering on about Graham’s sexuality.
Nobody here knows a thing about his sexual preferences or his sexual life.
Nobody here would think of posting that they didn’t care that Obama was black. We even managed to get folks here to stop going on about the size of Chris Christie eventually. But still folks feel the need to insist that they know Graham is gay, or brag that they don’t care that he is gay.
Graham is continually aiding and abetting one of the most evil men in our history, and yet you still want to prattle on about his sexuality? You are saying far more about yourselves than Graham.
cmorenc
Yep – that’s exactly the phenomenon I was referring to. Lindsey Graham fits the paradigm spot-on.
zhena gogolia
@Kent:
The problem with the term “white trash” is that it implies (as I believe it was intended to) that all black people are trash. It’s only with white people that you have to specify.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@zhena gogolia: yeah, that term bothers me
and “trailer trash” is punching down. IMHO
mdblanche
Obligatory Lindsey Graham sound–track
Ruckus
@Ksmiami:
The majority of the republican party has been bad for the country for my entire 70 years. It’s just been more obvious in the last 25 years.
sdhays
@zhena gogolia: I agree, although I had a chuckle about what it means if you extend that idea to the phrase “poor, white trash”.
Ruckus
@Kent:
Him coming from those roots might explain why he’s so willing to suck up. It may be all he’s ever known in so far as surviving.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
It’s not his fault he started life in that situation, it sort of is that effectively he’s stayed PWT, given what he’s done with his life.
sdhays
@Mandalay: I have to agree. It really doesn’t matter what his sexuality is as long as no one has been hurt. I do suspect that there’s some kompromat involved in his recent extreme adherence to Dump’s ass, but it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with his sexuality.
Ruckus
@JaySinWA:
Graham is the opposite of trump in personality. He’s a suck up vs a narcissist. The two fit like gloves.
J R in WV
I’m well aware of the characteristics of “poor white trash” and the problems they create in their communities. My problem with the term is that to me it seems way too close to the N word, and it seems to me we could and should find a less racially charged way of referring to that class of unfortunates.
I live in a neighborhood where a local “pastor” collects food and passes it out to the less well off folks in the neighborhood, He actually offers it to me as well, but I decline as we can afford stupid levels of food consumption. Reverend Jerry built himself a small church where he preaches to his friends and family. He also cuts timber a little.
To me, the trash part isn’t related to the poverty so much as it is related to the behaviors. And lots of them wind up tweakers hooked on meth or junkies hooked on smack, and those are willing to steal anything, even stuff nailed down or otherwise installed in a system.
Our well house door is fastened with multiple 6 inch lag bolts to keep the heat tape from being stolen right off the water pipes! We have an friend who’s mom ran a beer joint. They are now a well-respected federal judge, so growing up living in the back of a small town bar is no barrier to morals, good judgement and humanity.
And Justice “Rapey — I Love Brewskis” Kavanaugh shows that growing up in a well to do suburban home with great schooling is no guarantee of morality, good judgement or humanity.
@Ruckus:
I agree totally with this. Here he is, a lawyer, Congressman, Senator, total scumbag also too.
Dan B
@Mandalay: As a Gold Star Kinsey 6 gay man the issue with Graham is hypocrisy. There are many gay men who have led closeted lives and the result has been burning hatred for openly gay people and lets not talk about their feelings for trans and drag. Roy Cohn is high on the list but so is Peter Thiel and our current ambassador to Germany whose fascist sentiments the Germans despise. And lets remember Aaron Schock. Many LGBT people thought he was gay. He was but us gays recognized the homophobia, classism, etc. He’s turned up lately with the most sexy guys at the homes of the .1%. People like them see the world in binary terms. Victor and victim are their pole stars. They are very comfortable pushing all “inferiors” into the gas chambers not realizing when the fags run out they’re next. Their homophobia is accompanied by misogyny and frequently by racism. The vast majority of LGBT people know they are gay and know they are sick people, not because they are gay. They have bought societies prejudices and run with them instead of working to improve the world.
Chris Johnson
@sdhays: Still is constructed in such a way that you’re saying ‘THIS is how you distinguish from the regular, ordinary, commonly-accepted trash-people. This is the difference from the norm’.
It’s a shit term, agreed that it’s no good.
catclub
Hence the existence of New Orleans – far enough away and anonymous to the small towners. Also, Memphis and Atlanta.
Another Scott
@J R in WV: Bronze Star awarded retired Air Force Colonel, also too.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@J R in WV:
One of the few arguments I ever won with my late Republican father was when I pointed out that people who are poor and immoral become drug dealers and people who are rich and immoral run Enron. He didn’t really have a good retort for that.
(Yes, both arguments are racially charged. That was kind of my point — both rich white people and poor black people become criminals, it’s just that their venues of operation are different.)
sab
@Kent: So my first husband of questionned gender preference had six golden retrievers. What are you implying.? Good dogs all, but he gambled too much, and was otherwise often a jerk. Poor dogs who lost the custody battle. All day parked under the camper shell in a pickup truck while Dad gamed (not gambled, he was good) when they wanted to be home on the couch or aslep on the deck. My dogs won the custody battle and went home to romp through midwestern Metroparks, sometimes off leash.
Ascap_scab
I look forward to the day when we find Miss Lindsay dead in a closet wearing two wet suits and a dildo in his ass.