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.
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