Lindsey Graham Reprise: "My Party Is Completely Screwed Up"

In a Republican presidential candidate pool that looked for the most part like a group of escapees from an insane asylum, prior to his suspension of his campaign, Lindsey Graham, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen, much to my surprise actually came across as a reasonable candidate.  While Graham bears his share of the blame for the decline of the GOP into a fetid mass of lunatics suffering from swamp fever, he at least seems  willing to admit how off the rails the GOP has become.  Last night on The Daily Show again enunciated the sad state of the GOP.  Here are highlights from a piece in Huffington Post:

For Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the only thing worse than the prospect of Ted Cruz as president is the prospect of Donald Trump as president.

Graham begrudgingly expressed his support for Cruz in an interview with Trevor Noah on Wednesday night, telling “The Daily Show” host that the Texas senator was his “15th choice” to win the GOP nomination.

Graham ultimately concluded that Cruz should be the nominee because “he’s not Trump.”

And that’s where things got interesting.

“If Donald Trump carries the banner of my party,” Graham said, “I think it taints conservatism for generations to come. I think his campaign is opportunistic, race-baiting, religious bigotry, xenophobia. Other than that, he’d be a good nominee.”

Noah played a short video clip from late January in which Graham, who was himself a candidate earlier in the presidential race, was asked if he preferred a Cruz nomination or a Trump nomination.

“That’s... like [asking if I’d rather be] shot or poisoned,” Graham responded in the video, “What does it really matter?”

Asked by Noah which candidate is doing the shooting and which is the poison, Graham answered, “Donald is like being shot in the head. You might find an antidote to poisoning, I don’t know, but maybe there’s time.”

“I’m saying my party is completely screwed up for the moment,” he added.

Is The Republican Party About to Settle for Cruz?

The presence of either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz is a frightening thought.   Both are unfit for the presidency.  Yet, in some ways, Cruz is the scarier prospect given his extremism, demonstrated willingness to lie and play underhanded games, and intention to nominate Christian extremists to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Yet given the choice between the two, some in the so-called GOP establishment seem poised to accept Cruz as the lesser of the two evils.   For many, this is a stark turn around form just weeks or months ago.   A piece in The Atlantic looks at the growing movement to accept Cruz as the anti-Trump alternative.  Here are excerpts:

There was a time—long, long ago—when the Republican Party was afraid of Donald Trump, but it truly loathed Ted Cruz.

They hated him. They couldn’t stand him. They might have thought Trump was a huckster, they might have thought he didn’t have any idea what he was doing, and they might have thought he was a bigot, but at least he wasn’t as insufferable as Ted Cruz, the man who had gone out of his way to wreck the party’s plans in Congress, and had called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar. Forced to choose, party elders tended to shudder and lean Trump.

A lot can change in a couple weeks. Graham made his joke about murdering Cruz way back on February 26, which makes it all the more surprising to hear from the South Carolina senator these days.

“I can work with Ted Cruz,” Graham said. “I know what I’m getting with Ted Cruz.”

That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it’s something. Graham may be the most prominent Republican coming around on Cruz, but he’s not the only one. One implication of the “#NeverTrump” movement is that anyone is more acceptable—especially Cruz, who is at least a Republican. On Tuesday night, on the eve of his state’s primary, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant announced his endorsement of Cruz. It’s telling that at this late stage in the campaign Cruz still hasn’t received the blessing of a single sitting member of the body in which he serves. The shift, however tentative and awkward and pained, by Republican officeholders toward Cruz is something to behold, nearly as surprising asTrump’s own collection of a few establishment backers. 

It isn’t too hard to guess what’s driving people toward Cruz. The last two weeks have seen Trump’s bizarre flirtation with David Duke—first disavowing the former KKK leader’s backing, then refusing to do so, then implausibly blaming it all on a faulty earpiece. They have also seen the near disintegration of Marco Rubio's campaign. 

For the first time, many Republicans seem to be realizing that they may in fact have to choose between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. In that case, with apologies to John Boehner, they may decide: better the “jackass” you know than the one you don’t.

How will this affect Cruz? He’s expressed delight at hatred from these party loyalists. He mentions it all the time. It’s just proof of his outsider bona fides. 

“If you nominate Trump and Cruz, I think you get the same outcome,” he [Graham] said in January. “Whether it’s death by being shot or poisoning doesn’t really matter. I don’t think the outcome will be substantially different.” But if has to choose his method of execution, Graham seems to have decided poisoning doesn’t sound so bad.