Lindsey Graham doesn’t even know what he’s trying to do

| 6:00 pm EST February 10, 2021
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Lindsey Graham has gone from being one of Donald Trump’s strongest detractors – during the course of the 2016 election, when he thought Trump would cost the GOP the Senate – to being one of his most brazen apologists. It’s often been suggested that Trump is blackmailing Graham and some of the other Republican senators, but there’s a simpler explanation: Most of Trump’s agenda, like the 2017 tax cuts and killing Obamacare are really just parts of the GOP platform that have always been there, and Republicans like Graham sensed their short window to act, so they ran with it. There’s not much of an alternative they had either – since senators like Graham, who represents a solidly red state, need the votes of Trump’s base.

Now that Trump is out of power, Graham’s position is somewhere in between. For the last few days, Graham has been saying that history will hold Trump accountable, but that he can’t do it right now as a U.S. Senator. He has basically acknowledged that Trump bears responsibility for the attacks on the Capitol but knows that the moment he tries to do anything about it, he and his fellow Republicans will be facing much worse primary challengers back home.

His fears of what would happen to the GOP if Trump lost seem to be happening now, in much worse fashion than he thought. If the majority of Republican senators agree with Graham on this, then it’s up to us to hold him accountable, and the party that aided and abetted him for so long.