In February 2016, Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina who once ran for president, said the GOP "has gone batshit crazy" for supporting Donald Trump for president.
On May 6, 2021, Graham criticized those in the GOP who want to move away from the defeated president saying the Republican Party needs Trump to survive.
“Can we move forward without President Trump? The answer is no,” Graham said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
(Listen to the podcast)
The comment came as part of a discussion about soon-to-be-excommunicated House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY), who's been an outspoken critic of Trump, calling him out for his false claims that the election was stolen and that he actually won.
“I’ve always liked Liz Cheney, but she’s made a determination that the Republican Party can’t grow with President Trump,” Graham said. “I’ve determined we can’t grow without him.”
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a sad state of affairs for the GOP.
What it apparently means is that except for a lying, cheating, womanizing, perhaps criminal Donald John Trump, the Grand Old Party has nothing left.
It is tacit acknowledgement that its dribble down economic philosophies and its racist tendencies have been rejected by a majority of voters. Having abandoned the conservative principles that it adhered to throughout its history, the GOP has now become nothing more than Donald Trump's own personal political militia, and Graham, who in 2015 said Trump was a "race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot," is now one of its generals.
That doesn't say much for Graham's own personal moral values, as he's cozied up to Trump, become his golfing bud, confidant, advisor, perhaps even father confessor -- if Trump could shed his ego long enough to confess anything.
But for the GOP, it says a ton.
Here's a party that is casting aside a loyal conservative, solid, highly respected member of the House in Liz Cheney, who said Trump was "poisoning our democratic system" with his false election claims. Instead, the GOP is dumping her for an opportunistic Trump disciple, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R_NY), who Trump has endorsed to replace Cheney in the House GOP's number three leadership slot.
Stefanik has embraced Trump's lies about the election and has weaseled her way into sure-thing status for Cheney's leadership job.
With reports out of Mar-A-Lago that Trump is laying the groundwork to exact revenge against the few GOP House Members who voted to impeach him for his role in inciting the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, it is clear that Republicans are falling in line, still fearful of DJT's influence over his mob of supporters, including those in their districts.
But not everybody is running scared.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) defending Cheney, blasted House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for supporting the effort to oust Cheney.
"She is being run out for one thing: her consistency. She said the exact same thing that Kevin McCarthy said on January 6, which is Donald Trump is responsible" for the riot, Kinzinger said at a virtual event hosted by the National Press Club.
"You cannot unite with lies, if somebody is going to use lies to gain power and say, 'let's have unity,' you can't do it," he added. "'We need to remove Liz Cheney because she makes me have to answer questions that I know are false.' That's what they're saying."
Kinzinger, who no doubt is in Trump's crosshairs, went on to say that the GOP's House leadership has "decided that winning the next election was more important than a clear-eyed recognition of what happened on January 6."
"That was a lie that led to violence," Kinzinger said. "We've had leaders in our party -- Donald Trump, members of Congress -- that have convinced their base because it's easier to do that and to tell them the truth, which is that 74 million people were not disenfranchised. They were outnumbered."
Unlike Lindsey Graham, who has done nothing but ass kiss Trump since those choice words back when he was running against him, Kinzinger left no doubt about how he feels about the defeated, discredited former president.
"I think he's never made a real decision in his life and I think he's scared to death of his own shadow," Kinzinger said of Trump.
Well, if that's the case, why can't others in the GOP see that? If Trump is afraid of his own shadow, why are they deathly afraid of Trump?
I'll tell you why.
It's simply opportunism. They still see Trump as providing their own personal path to political success, and it makes no difference that in the process they are selling their souls to the devil.
The Republican Party deserves what it is bringing upon itself as do the politicians who are leading it into oblivion.