GRAHAM, McCONNELL, ALITO AND THE REPUBLICAN AUTOMAT

Lindsey Graham is dead. He was a bad person and a weak person. Steve Schmidt wrote his obituary in 2020:

People try to analyze Lindsey through the prism of the manifest inconsistencies that exist between things that he used to believe and what he’s doing now. The way to understand him is to look at what’s consistent. And essentially what he is in American politics is what, in the aquatic world, would be a pilot fish: a smaller fish that hovers about a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its detritus. That’s Lindsey. And when he swam around the McCain shark, broadly viewed as a virtuous and good shark, Lindsey took on the patina of virtue. But wherever the apex shark is, you find the Lindsey fish hovering about, and Trump’s the newest shark in the sea.

I don't mourn him, but I don't celebrate his death.

Mitch McConnell is a bad person who may or may not be dead. I won't mourn him, but I won't celebrate his death either.

What political difference will their deaths make?

I know that most of you see the Republican Party as nothing more than a Donald Trump personality cult, but it's really more of a hive mind. Wherever the dominant figures in the party stand on a particular issue, that's where just about everyone else in the party stands. When Graham's replacement glides to victory in November in South Carolina, and McConnell's replacement does the same in Kentucky, you'll barely notice the difference in how Republicans do business.

Graham's replacement will be less of a foreign policy neocon than Graham was -- though Graham's interventionism has never been an impediment to the allegedly isolationist Trump (who's become a Graham-like interventionist in his second term). Mark Lynch, the candidate Graham beat in the Republican primary earlier this year, claimed to be very different from Graham on foreign policy:

Lindsey Graham has been one of the strongest voices in Washington for foreign intervention, backing prolonged military engagements and continued overseas involvement without clear endpoints. From supporting open-ended commitments to approving billions in foreign aid, his approach has too often put America in conflicts without defined objectives or accountability.

Mark Lynch believes America’s military exists to defend the United States, not to fight endless wars abroad. He will push for a strong, focused national defense that protects our homeland, respects the Constitution, and ensures that every deployment serves a clear and necessary purpose.

But if Lynch were to become South Carolina's next senator, he'd back whatever "prolonged military engagements" Trump dreams up, and he'll never fight to ensure that a president of his own party identify "a clear and necessary purpose" for those engagements. He'll vote for budgets with "billions in foreign aid" because the party's leaders in Congress will insist.

McConnell? Congressman Andy Barr is the Republican candidate who'll replace him. From his campaign website:

He's more loyal to Trump than McConnell has been, though McConnell was never disloyal when it might make a significant difference.

McConnell is the guy who rammed Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court appointment through the Senate just before the 2020 election. McConnell is no longer the Senate majority leader -- but do you think John Thune will have any trouble ramming through Samuel Alito's replacement this fall if, as many assume, he steps down in the next month or two? It's not the individual leader who matters.

I won't really cheer Alito's departure. Who'll get his job? Federal judge James Ho, perhaps?

On September 29, 2022, Ho delivered a speech at a Federalist Society conference in Kentucky and said he would no longer hire law clerks from Yale Law School, which he said was plagued by "cancel culture" and students disrupting conservative speakers. Ho said Yale "not only tolerates the cancellation of views — it actively practices it", and he urged other judges to likewise boycott the school....

On May 6, 2024, Ho cosigned a letter alongside twelve federal judges, which he shared with CNN, vowing not to hire Columbia University law students or undergraduates for concerns that the university is not doing enough to counter students protesting the war in Gaza....

Ho was for many years a prominent defender of birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, but shifted his views on the topic after Donald Trump was elected in 2024.

A Fox News grandpa on the Court is almost certain to be replaced by a younger Fox News grandpa.

When I think of the GOP, I think of the old Automat -- you take a piece of apple pie and it's replaced in the slot by a nearly identical piece of apple pie.

Occasionally it matters when one particular Republican is gone, but not very often. This is why I think it's important to attack the GOP as a party, in the hopes of winning over soft supporters who choose the party in elections primarily because it's the default choice where they live. They're the ones keeping the party going, ensuring that zealots replace zealots in perpetuity even though they're not zealots themselves. Only constant attacks on the GOP as a whole can possibly threaten its ongoing dominance of American politics.