The late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who unexpectedly died of a brief and sudden illness on Saturday, once took pride in standing up to extremism within the Republican Party — at least, before he decided to hitch his political cart to President Donald Trump’s wagon.
In a 2014 Politico article that the website recently began recirculating in light of Graham’s death, reporter Manu Raju wrote that “Graham’s deft maneuvering shows why he’s become the dominant political figure in this deeply red state and is skating to another six years even as he’s angered the base on immigration and other hot-button issues. Far from pandering to the party’s tea party wing in order to get reelected, he’s challenging it head-on: Graham warns that the GOP is caught in a ‘death spiral’ with minorities, says it needs to get real about climate change and defends his move to open debate on gun control legislation after a school massacre.”
On one occasion, as Politico reported at the time, Graham chastised many of his fellow Republicans for demanding ideological purity tests, saying that instead they should be open to a diverse range of opinions.
“What I want is a party that can grow,” Graham said at the time. “What’s my big sin: 1-in-10 [votes defecting from the party line]? If we’re going to build the party around universal agreement, we become a club.”
He also expressed pride in getting lambasted by his own party for supporting immigration reform, even though South Carolina’s Latino population in 2014 was only 5 percent, and warned that the GOP was in a “death spiral” with nonwhite voters that would not end unless they did more to advocate for policies that could help minority Americans. He also argued that a conservative message could sell well with racial minorities if the party would stop taking such a hard-line stance on issues like immigration.
Similarly, Graham expressed a willingness to advocate for issues that he believed involved Americans’ existential futures, even if doing so was unpopular with the GOP base.
“Graham, in the interview, was unapologetic about his unsuccessful attempt to cut a deal with Democrats on controlling climate change,” Politico reported in 2014. “Humans, he said, ‘to some extent, absolutely’ are contributing to global warming and the GOP needs a rational environmental policy, with a heavy emphasis on nuclear power.”
By the time Trump became president, however, Graham had flip-flopped on key issues like immigration, climate change and reaching out to minority voters, instead transitioning from a moderate Republican to a staunch MAGA adherent. In return for this evolution, Graham became an influence within the administration, most notably playing a key role in convincing Trump to wage his controversial ongoing war against Iran.
Despite describing Trump as a “jack---” during the 2016 presidential election (in which Graham ran against him in the GOP primaries), saying “if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it” and describing him as "the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican party,” Graham subsequently became a diehard backer of the president and his agenda. Yet after successfully pushing Trump to invade Iran, many in his own party’s base turned against him.
“Lindsey Graham needs to be removed from the Situation Room. I don’t want to hear one word from a guy with no kids, desperately sending our sons and daughters into war on the ground in Iran,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) recently wrote on social media regarding Graham’s ongoing support of the Iran war.