RIP Lindsey Graham

I suppose murder is possible but it’s a bit premature to jump to any conclusions.

WSJ:
Emergency personnel in Washington responded to a medical emergency for a person suffering from cardiac arrest at Graham’s address on Capitol Hill on Saturday evening, according to a recording of police scanner traffic reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
 
Wondering how this will affect the midterms in November. Will this be another win for the Democrats?
South Carolina. I wouldn’t bet on it.

WSJ:
“South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who called Graham the fiercest of fighters for his state, can make an immediate appointment to fill the lawmaker’s seat under the state’s law.”
 
Big supporter of Ukraine and war against Iran. What a shocker when everyone has been focused on McConnel
 
Lindsey Graham is dead at 71. In 2016, he dared America on camera: "Use my words against me." This is his obituary. These are his words.



In December 2015, Graham looked into a camera and called Donald Trump a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot." By February 2016: "I think he's a kook. I think he's crazy." That May he wrote: "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed... and we will deserve it." He refused to vote for him.

Then Trump won, and Lindsey Graham discovered golf.

By late 2017 he was scolding the media for calling the president, yes, really, a kook.

His best friend was John McCain, a man Trump mocked for being captured in Vietnam and kept mocking after he was dead. Graham wept for McCain on the Senate floor, then deepened his devotion to the man who spat on his grave.

The words he wanted used came in 2016, when he swore that if a Supreme Court seat opened in an election year, the next president should fill it. In 2018 he repeated the promise and added: "hold the tape."

In October 2020, as Judiciary chairman, he rammed Amy Coney Barrett onto the Court eight days before the election.

In November 2020, Georgia's Republican secretary of state said Graham had called him asking about tossing legally cast mail ballots. Graham denied it, fought the grand jury subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court, and lost.

On January 6th, with the glass still on the Capitol floor, he announced: "Count me out. Enough is enough." He was back at Mar-a-Lago within months.

He cheered the country into Iraq. Three weeks ago he was on television promising that if diplomacy failed, Trump was "going to take the Strait of Hormuz."

Honesty requires one more line: he was, to the end, one of Ukraine's most reliable champions in the Senate, and he died the day after standing beside Zelensky in Kyiv. Even a ledger this dark has an entry in the other column.

But the ledger is the legacy. A man who saw exactly what Trump was, said so in the plainest English of his era, and then spent nine years kneeling to it for relevance.

He asked us to use his words against him.
Consider them used.
 
Lindsey Graham is dead at 71. In 2016, he dared America on camera: "Use my words against me." This is his obituary. These are his words.



In December 2015, Graham looked into a camera and called Donald Trump a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot." By February 2016: "I think he's a kook. I think he's crazy." That May he wrote: "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed... and we will deserve it." He refused to vote for him.

Then Trump won, and Lindsey Graham discovered golf.

By late 2017 he was scolding the media for calling the president, yes, really, a kook.

His best friend was John McCain, a man Trump mocked for being captured in Vietnam and kept mocking after he was dead. Graham wept for McCain on the Senate floor, then deepened his devotion to the man who spat on his grave.

The words he wanted used came in 2016, when he swore that if a Supreme Court seat opened in an election year, the next president should fill it. In 2018 he repeated the promise and added: "hold the tape."

In October 2020, as Judiciary chairman, he rammed Amy Coney Barrett onto the Court eight days before the election.

In November 2020, Georgia's Republican secretary of state said Graham had called him asking about tossing legally cast mail ballots. Graham denied it, fought the grand jury subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court, and lost.

On January 6th, with the glass still on the Capitol floor, he announced: "Count me out. Enough is enough." He was back at Mar-a-Lago within months.

He cheered the country into Iraq. Three weeks ago he was on television promising that if diplomacy failed, Trump was "going to take the Strait of Hormuz."

Honesty requires one more line: he was, to the end, one of Ukraine's most reliable champions in the Senate, and he died the day after standing beside Zelensky in Kyiv. Even a ledger this dark has an entry in the other column.

But the ledger is the legacy. A man who saw exactly what Trump was, said so in the plainest English of his era, and then spent nine years kneeling to it for relevance.

He asked us to use his words against him.
Consider them used.
John McCain was an honorable man. His daughter is honorable as well. Both had and hold moral standards that speak to being human, compassionate, and honorable.

While I wouldn’t necessarily agree with all their thoughts, I do admire their rationality.

So many others besides Graham could be said to be of the same whole cloth. No need to name them here. But they are in positions of power that have also flip-flopped on Trump’s worthiness as president.

RIP. As Mark Antony said of Caesar, "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him."

Of course Antony’s speech twisted those words, eventually creating chaos in Rome, but that’s another topic. Here, this eulogy by Deluxauto sufficies to mark and mire what other good Graham may have done. It seems fitting.

We can still stand in silence out of respect while his friends and family grieve.
 
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