Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham used to be known primarily for wanting to bomb things and for being Sen. John McCain's one-man chorus. He was forever being held up as one of the serious ones, in countless television appearances and interviews. Like most Republicans, he used to have open contempt for candidate Donald Trump.
And then the 2016 elections happened and Lindsey Graham lost his flippin' mind in a very particular way, distancing himself from even his longtime Senate "friend" in an effort to climb to the top of Donald Trump's hairpiece and build himself a summer home there. Good God, Lindsey, just what do the Russian hackers have on you?
Graham told The Associated Press this week that he "regrets" that McCain "didn't have more time" with the president, pointing out that McCain was able to forgive the men who imprisoned him in Vietnam. Graham optimistically theorized: "Who knows what would have happened over time?"
Ew. Ew, ew, ew. Ew.
There are a lot of Republicans who switched from Trump skeptics to Trump sycophants after the election. As in, mostly all of them. But few have reversed course as completely and as, well, pathetically as Lindsey Graham has. Even other Republicans have been stumped by Graham's radical change of course.
So why is it happening? We don't know. Nobody knows. Maybe he's doing it because he seeks power and Donald Trump has it. Maybe his friendship with McCain was phony all along—mere opportunism or convenience—and fell apart as soon as the sick McCain had nothing more to offer him. Maybe Lindsey Graham, who after the elections said that Russian hackers had infiltrated his own campaign as well, doesn't want whatever those hackers found to see the light of day—and if that means sucking up to Donald, sucking up to Donald it is.
It's a mystery. All we know for sure is that this Linsdey Graham appears to be a completely different person from the one he was before Donald Trump got elected. You invite the man to your private golf club a few times and you can apparently change his mind about pretty much anything.