There were two Lindsey Grahams
The things Lindsey Graham must have told himself to get by are many. That deep down, Donald Trump’s heart was in the right place. That he was helping the country. That his old friend John McCain would have understood. That he was the same Lindsey Graham he’d always been. The late GOP senator from South Carolina died suddenly on Saturday evening at the age of 71 due to an aortic dissection, a death that would have mercifully been fast. The more poetic among us might find a metaphor there; the major artery to Graham’s heart was literally torn in two. But that was not the only division he encountered. There existed two Lindsey Grahams: a pre-2017 version who consistently placed himself at the center of bipartisan dealmaking that no longer really exists on Capitol Hill, and the one who came after — who plotted his political troth to a man who regards compromise as weakness, and whose anti-democratic instincts sometimes seem to resemble the very autocrats Graham often pushed to overthrow. The first Graham showcased how …
