Lindsey Graham delivered one of the more unintentionally hilarious media appearances in recent memory this afternoon, slamming his own party for “capitulations” in the lame duck session.
Graham said Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for allowing ratification of the New START Treaty and other legislation in the period before new lawmakers are sworn in in January.
“When it’s all going to be said and done, Harry Reid has eaten our lunch,” Graham said on Fox News radio. “This has been a capitulation in two weeks of dramatic proportions of policies that wouldn’t have passed in the new Congress.” [...]
“I can understand the Democrats being afraid of the new Republicans; I can’t understand Republicans being afraid of the new Republicans,” Graham lamented on WTMA radio. “They’re not opportunities to take everything you couldn’t do for two years and jam it. It’s literally what they’re doing, across the board. And after a while, I stop blaming them, and I blame us.”
Graham blamed outgoing Republican senators in particular.
“They have used the power of the Senate against the minority, and we have, quite frankly, a handful of us have been letting them do it. And a lot of the people who are doing this got beat. And that’s what makes me so upset,” he said. “It makes me disappointed that, with a new group of Republicans coming in, we could get a better deal on almost everything.”
Amazingly enough, alienating Senators, calling them RINOs for years and generally impugning their character has led them to fight back. Lisa Murkowski and Bob Bennett are basically voting like moderate Democrats on several issues in this lame duck, and Murkowski will be back next year.
But I don’t want to go too far with this analysis. The policies passed in this lame duck enjoy broad bipartisan support among the public; this is not a case of any Republican stepping out on some core Democratic issue. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal had 78% support, for example. Second, the biggest thing that the Congress did in the lame duck was lock in a woefully inadequate tax structure and block the majority from funding the government for the rest of the year. The LONG GAME still points to Republicans’ favor – they have reduced revenue to a level where the incoming Congress can drown the government in the bathtub. Ultimately, that’s the most consequential by-product of this lame duck. Productivity does not equal success, in other words.
Graham’s probably making a big show of being upset because he knows that he’s had the label of RINO tagged on him in the past. So he wants to separate and make common caused with the incoming tea party Congress. And it’s true that many base supporters generally view their side as capitulators, regardless of the facts, as a key part of a strategy to keep politicians in line.
I think it’s better to assess these issues on the merits, rather than through one sweeping statements or the other. I would call the Democrats’ performance in the lame duck impressive; but ultimately, the Republicans laid down very fertile seeds for their vision of a shrunken government and tattered safety net. It’s possible to hold both of those ideas in your head at once.
