Jim Geraghty of National Review Online analyzes responses to US Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sudden and unexpected death.
While Graham spent his 23-year Senate career advocating for a lot of causes, he was best known as a hawk. In some circles, that position gets denounced as being a warmonger, but hawkishness largely amounts to wanting to see free people remain free, to see unfree peoples get freed from the authoritarians that oppress them, and a willingness to take steps to pursue those goals.
The tributes pouring in for Graham since word of his death Sunday morning deserve to be seen as the senator enjoying the last laugh. The guy who was supposedly merely a sidekick somehow became one of the most important conduits between the president and Republican senators, the indispensable man getting the executive and legislative branches to row their oars in the same direction. Graham won a lot more policy fights than he lost over his career, and he somehow often kept the respect of his Democratic colleagues.
Graham was supposedly a relic of an earlier Reaganite time, and yet here we are in the middle of 2026, and the “America First” president has kept selling arms to Ukraine; put Nicolás Maduro in jail and made Marco Rubio the de facto “viceroy” of Venezuela; bombed the heck out of the Iranians throughout the year; scared the Cuban government so it keeps emphasizing it is willing to negotiate to avoid a U.S. invasion; and next year’s defense appropriations are going to be, at minimum, $100 billion more than last year, if not $500 billion more.
If, as Graham’s critics insisted, he was such a loser . . . why did he keep winning?
In contrast to many other Republicans who ran against Donald Trump and lost, Graham figured out he could get more done with Trump as an ally and developed a genuine friendship with the president.
