Let me say at the outset that I’d rather have Lindsey Graham in the United States Senate than any Democrat, especially the clown he beat last time who is now the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (liberals fail up). Jamie Harrison is a racist pile of garbage on top of being a moron who would do everything he was told by the White House. Graham is a lot of things, and one of them is significantly better than Harrison is in every way. But he’s far from perfect and getting farther away from it every day.
When John McCain was alive Lindsey Graham followed him around like a puppy and did all he could to imitate him. When McCain died, Graham was kind of lost and latched on to President Donald Trump. Since Trump left office, Graham has been kind of lost – desperate to matter and get media attention while trying to placate his progressive instincts to “do something” about whatever the domestic issue is and embracing every prospect for war because that’s been the only constant in his career.
In that attempt to “matter” and “do something,” Senator Graham proposed this week to create a “new regulatory agency” to license companies like Twitter. As awful at these tech companies are and can be, the idea of a new regulatory agency is worse. Is there nothing that exists that could be repurposed? Graham isn’t even floating the idea of eliminating one or several existing agencies that have outlived their usefulness and reforming them to handle this, putting aside the idea of the feds licensing these companies. I might look favorably on it if there was a 3 to 1 elimination of existing jobs for the creation of new ones, something to shrink government at least a little. But it’s not part of this.
Graham’s proclamation on this new agency involves “teaming up” with Senator Elizabeth Warren, and there is no way she will ever allow for the shrinking of government or anything remotely good. How lost do you have to be to think Warren is an ally?
But working with a Massachusetts liberal is hardly the biggest problem Graham created this week. For reasons unknown, as he is not up this cycle, Graham decided to undercut the conservative argument against Roe v Wade being overturned and introduce a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks.
You might agree with the sentiment, but the execution is a horrible idea. First, it gives the left something to badger Republican candidates coast to coast on the issue. While that might play well in Georgia’s Senate race, it could be a different result in Pennsylvania or Ohio. Every campaign needs to be free to run however it deems best, they don’t needs some jackass in DC dictating terms and arming their opponents. Now they’ll all have to answer about Graham’s proposal repeatedly.
Second, the conservative argument against Roe in a nutshell was it’s horribly decided, and should it be overturned it wouldn’t outlaw abortion but return it to the states. Democrats want to federalize abortion in the law, Republicans wanted it left to the states. Lindsey Graham’s legislation cedes the point to Democrats that this is an issue for the federal government.
A 15-week ban would legalize abortion nationwide up to that point, doing the bidding of Democrats by usurping the power from the states for the feds. What’s the point? Don’t give me the morality argument, we aren’t dealing with morality we’re dealing with the Constitution.
Murder isn’t a federal crime, it’s a state crime. States should be able to decide for themselves their laws on most things, including abortion. If you want to outlaw it, it’s much easier to do it on a state-by-state basis than nationally. We’d just won the concept of federalism on abortion and Lindsay Graham came along and bombed it. Why?
That’s the real question: why now? There is no good answer, or at least no rational one.
The only thing I can come up with is without someone to suck up to, Graham is reverting back to his McCain roots. There’s something to be said for boat rocking, but it should only be done when the boat needs to be rocked. Doing it for attention or lack of self-control are not good reasons. For the cheering he’s getting from some quarters, his actions are doing damage in others. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t care, and for that reason he’s an idiot.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily nationally syndicated radio show, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.