Few members of the Republican Party have taken a political journey as long as Lindsey Graham’s, from ridiculing Donald Trump as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” to becoming one of the president’s fiercest defenders in Congress, as well as a regular golf partner. Graham has long been known to have flexible politics, and that has served him well in South Carolina for decades. But this November may be his toughest test yet as he seeks reelection and explains to voters how, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he will push for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee on the president’s aggressive timetable, when the senator was so clearly — even defiantly — opposed to that approach as recently as two years ago, even demanding that he be called out for hypocrisy if he switched. He switched. “The rules have changed as far as I’m concerned,” Graham said Saturday. It falls to Graham, as committee chairman, to vet Trump’s pick to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and manage the spectacle of televised hearings on the nomination. It’s one of the most volatile tasks in all of politics, more so now with a pandemic raging, a country on edge, and the ideological tilt of the high court in the balance, perhaps for a generation. And, Graham has Jaime Harrison to worry about. The Democratic Senate candidate is running close to Graham, according to one recent poll, despite the conservative tilt of South Carolina, and is matching the three-term incumbent in fundraising that has yielded a total of more than $30 million apiece. Harrison hopes to use the shifting Supreme Court stance against Graham, as does a pro-Harrison political action committee which, along with The Lincoln Project, is up with a $1 million ad buy aiming to use Graham’s own 2018 pledge to oppose future election-year confirmations to the court. The Lincoln Project is a group of current and former Republican officials looking to defeat Trump. “If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait to the next election,” Graham said at an event hosted by The Atlantic magazine. Reminded that he was speaking on the record, Graham doubled down: “Yeah. Hold the tape.” On Saturday, Harrison also posted video from a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting in 2016, where Graham declared, “If there’s a Republican president (elected) in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said, ‘Let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.’” “My grandpa always said that a man is only as good as his word,” Harrison added on Twitter. “Senator Graham, you have proven your word is worthless.” The allegation that he’s a flip-flopper isn’t new for Graham. Over the years he has taken on and handily defeated primary challengers from the right who didn’t see him as conservative enough for South Carolina. Republicans control both legislative chambers in the state, and hold all statewide offices and most of the congressional seats. Graham was too conciliatory, critics argued, too ready to work out deals with Democrats on issues such as immigration alongside his longtime ally and friend, the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Graham explained some of that bipartisanship, including his votes in […]

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