What Lindsey Graham and the rest of the GOP toadies miss
By Jennifer Rubin January 9 at 1:30 PM
You can never be cynical enough in the era of Trump. The most passionate Republican defender of the rule of law will, without blinking an eye, vote to confirm judges rated unqualified by the American Bar Association, make scurrilous charges against the FBI and ignore President Trump’s attacks on the First Amendment. The most self-righteous defenders of religious freedom will be the loudest cheerleaders for the noxious Muslim travel ban. The most dogged hawk will find no fault with Trump’s denial of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The staunchest defender of Senate traditions will dispense with the filibuster for all judges and ram through major tax legislation with no final Congressional Budget Office scoring.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has set the bar high for utter sycophancy and hypocrisy for praising Trump on matters large and tiny. He set a new low (high) in moral self-debasement when he declared on Monday on “The View”: “I said he was a xenophobic, race-baiting religious bigot. I ran out of things to say. He won. … He’s our president.”
Think about that for a moment. Was Graham lying then when he called out Trump (for, among other things, insulting Sen. John McCain and other former prisoners of war), or has it simply become inconvenient to mention such things? It’s the perfect embodiment of Republicans’ reverence for power at the expense of decency; it exquisitely embodies the notion that support for Trump must supplant support for democratic norms (which he violates) and defense of the country from dangers he invites (e.g. war with North Korea) or ignores (e.g. Russian manipulation of our election). Graham is not the only one to reflect this mind-set, to be sure. He’s merely the most buffoonish and shameless of the lot.
Trump winning the presidency does not make him any less a “xenophobic, race-baiting religious bigot,” but it makes Graham infinitely less principled. Trump’s constant debasement of democratic norms and reckless international conduct, however, does not bother Graham or most of his colleagues.
We should be clear that “accepting” Trump is president does not alleviate the need to work on a transactional basis to head off disaster. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) hasn’t taken back a word of criticism of the president, but he is working with the White House to head off a disastrous decision to allow sanctions under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to resume, thereby making the United States an international pariah while Iran can boast that it is complying with the deal. That’s a far cry from saying, “I said that Trump needs adult day care, but he’s still president, so isn’t he grand?!” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has not recanted any attacks on the president, yet he is struggling to win parity for domestic funding in the budget and get protection for the “dreamers.” The choice is not between slavish devotion and refusing to interact with the president. Rather, it is whether one ceases to hold Trump to standards that every president should meet.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/01/09/what-lindsey-graham-and-the-rest-of-the-gop-toadies-miss
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