South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham is a flop. He pretends to be a
conservative, but sells out conservatives and insults them while
doing so. He pretends to be effective at reaching across party
lines, but the only thing he effectively does is help the other
party. He inhabits the Senate seat of Strom Thurmond, legendary for
great attention to his South Carolina constituents, but Graham
spends most of his time trailing behind John McCain like a valet as
McCain criss-crosses the country in pursuit of the presidency. He
called Ted Kennedy “one of the most principled men I’ve ever met.”
In sum, in the words of conservative movement stalwart Richard
Viguerie, “Lindsey Graham is part of the problem.”
What, for example, could possibly have possessed Graham, in
April of 2006, to write an essay for Time magazine about
the virtues of Hillary Clinton? He called her “a smart, prepared,
serious senator.” She is “sought out by her colleagues to form
legislative partnerships.” She has managed to “build unusual
political alliances with…conservatives.”
He praises liberals, but reserves particular venom for
conservatives who disagree with him. The most infamous example came
at a speech to the utterly radical Hispanic group La Raza — it was
bad enough that he spoke to them, much less what he said — when he
described what he would do to opponents of the awful immigration
proposal he helped Ted Kennedy craft: “We’re going to tell the
bigots to shut up.” The idea that only a bigot could oppose the
Kennedy amnesty plan was a recurring theme with Graham: On This
Week, he told George Stephanopoulos that opponents were like
those in earlier years who put up signs that said “No Catholics, no
Jews, no Irish need apply.”
MEANWHILE, GRAHAM deserves every bit of abuse conservatives can
heap on him for his record on judicial nominees, which swings back
and forth between pathetically ineffective and absolutely
counterproductive. Of his leading role in the “Gang of 14,” which
saved the Democrats’ unprecedented option of filibustering
President Bush’s nominees, Graham clearly thought his gesture of
goodwill would win him some chits with Democrats. Think again.
Right now his home circuit, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals,
suffers from the most serious official “judicial emergency” in the
country, with only 10 of the 15 seats filled.
Again and again, Graham has stood by helplessly, without seeming
to lift a finger in public protest, as Fourth Circuit nominees have
been hung out to dry — except for the time (more on this later)
when he himself was the enthusiastic hangman. Even though he sits
on the Judiciary Committee, he cannot even secure a hearing for his
home-state nominee, the superbly qualified, Reagan Administration
veteran Steve Matthews, who has been waiting for eight solid
months. On the other hand, more aggressive Republicans on the
committee have had far more success: For instance, John Cornyn of
Texas has effectively shepherded Texans Jennifer Elrod and
Catherina Hayes to confirmation since the Democrats re-took the
Senate majority — and without once sucking up to the Democrats to
do it.
In a conference call with conservative bloggers and reporters a
few weeks back, Graham defended the Gang thusly: “It was about a
process. It was about whether we were going to change the rules to
get a simple majority vote to get approval for the bench. If you
change the rules, you weaken the Senate.” But he had it backwards.
It was the Democrats who had thrown out the understanding of the
rules that had applied for 214 years, an understanding that it was
exactly a “simple majority” that was all that was necessary for
confirmation. It was to restore the proper understanding of the
rules that Republican leaders threatened the “constitutional
option” against Democratic filibusters — and it was Graham who
saved the day for the Democrats.
Meanwhile, the Gang at least was supposed to make it somewhat
easier to confirm judges by ruling out filibusters except in
“extraordinary circumstances.” It didn’t work. Before the Gang,
when there were just 51 Republican senators, the Senate approved 19
of 31 appeals court nominees. After the Gang, even with a larger
bloc of 55 Republicans in the Senate, the confirmation rate was
actually lower: just 16 out of 28. What’s worse, other than the
three nominees immediately approved through the Gang’s deal, the
few other post-Gang nominees who were approved tended to be less
solidly conservative than the ones approved in the previous
Congress.
And, of course, once the Democrats re-took a the majority, none
of the Gang’s supposed goodwill did any good: So far this Congress
the Senate has confirmed just seven appellate nominees, and just
one this year — again, without Graham making much of a peep about
it.
GRAHAM’S WORST ACTIONS on this front, though, came when he led
the fight against South Carolina native Jim Haynes for a Fourth
Circuit spot, supposedly because Haynes advocated “torture” at
Guantanamo Bay. That issue has been well covered here,
here,
and here.
In just the past month, though, new releases of Justice Department
documents show conclusively that the impetus for the enhanced
“stress positions” at Guantanamo came from Justice, and in
stronger fashion even than had previously been known, to
Haynes; and fair consideration of those memos make it all the more
clear that Haynes’ subsequent actions to make the interrogation
methods more lenient should have earned him Graham’s praise, not
his calumny.
Less well known than Graham’s apostasies against conservatism on
judges and immigration was his horrendous performance when
President Bush was pushing personal accounts for Social Security.
After putting himself forward as Bush’s point man in the Senate, he
failed to make any headway — and then it became obvious why:
Graham never really cared about personal accounts to begin with.
“We’ve now got this huge fight over a sideshow,” Graham told
Washington Post reporters and editors. “It’s always been a
sideshow, but we sold it as the main event.” Added Graham: “we’re
off in a ditch over a sideshow.” He said this in March of 2005,
directly undercutting Bush while Bush was still just getting fully
geared up to fight the good fight for this crucial conservative
reform. By the end of that month, he was pushing his own plan for
what the Post called “significant tax increases” to make
Social Security solvent.
Graham also has an absolutely terrible record on tort reform,
not just voting against GOP-backed reforms but actually joining
filibusters against them. As class-action plaintiffs’ attorneys
terrorize businesses and doctors with spurious lawsuits seeking
jackpot justice, Lindsey Graham roots them on.
On family issues, the conservative Eagle Forum gave him just a
44% rating in 2006. That same year he did terribly by the lights of
the English First, which explains itself thusly: “Our goals are
simple: Make English America’s official language. Give every child
the chance to learn English. Eliminate costly and ineffective
multilingual policies.” Graham received just a 25% rating from the
group.
“Graham doesn’t seem to have any conservative vision,” Viguerie
said. “He doesn’t seem to walk with conservatives. I’m not aware of
any movement conservatives on his staff.”
But for South Carolina’s senior senator, who needs conservatives
when getting in the good graces of Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy
is so much fun?
