August 27, 2018--As He Lay Dying

A day or two before the end, as his old best friend, John McCain, lay dying, as we have seen Lindsey do before, he couldn't keep his hands off his new best friend, Donald J. Trump. 

Senator Lindsey Graham is such a suck up for hunky men that when he encounters one, or one pretending to be one, he seemingly can't control himself.

This time, with Trump, the gift he brought was to clear a path that would enable him to fire the Attorney General with minimal political dissent or outrage. This he gift-wrapped for Trump, the one man John McCain clearly despised. At least he could have waited until after the funeral. We know Trump won't show up, isn't welcome, and now I wonder about jilted-by-death Lindsey. Will he have the cajones to show his face at the service. 

This gift about when and how to dump Sessions was hand delivered by the same swooning Lindsey who only a few months ago said that if Trump fires Sessions there will be "holy hell to pay."

Late last week Graham noted that Sessions has clearly lost Trump's confidence (this is news?) and that he, Lindsey, a leader in the Senate, did not necessarily object to Trump replacing him after the midterm elections. 

Presumably the congressional elections will result in deep loses among Republicans and, Graham suggested, as presidents in the past have done, Trump should "reshuffle" his cabinet mainly to deflect blame for the election results from himself to his hapless underlings. 

And by reshuffling Graham means dumping a few cabinet officers, not just Sessions, so he won't stick out so much. It would appear to be more a house cleaning than retribution because Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation and refused to see his job as protecting Trump from his own worst proclivities.

I suppose this advice constitutes something other than what Lindsey considers hell to pay.

Think Clinton in 1994, George W. Bush in 2006, and Barack Obama in 2010. All of whom reshuffled their cabinets after off-cycle election results.

And think how President Lyndon Johnson got around being pressured to make Bobby Kennedy his running mate in 1964. LBJ despised RFK even more than McCain hated Trump or Trump hates Sessions. 

He announced that his choice would not be from anyone serving in his cabinet (Bobby was still Attorney General) because there was so much work to do that he couldn't spare anyone's full-time attention. 

Everyone at the time knew what he was really doing--jettisoning Kennedy--and before long Johnson had become so politically toxic that he little choice but to withdrew from the 1986 race.

If only history could in this case repeat itself.

Rona has another theory about what Lindsey Graham is up to--

She thinks he is too smart and weaselly to give into his infatuation and is trying to trick Trump into not firing Sessions until after the midterms. He believes that Trump firing Sessions before November would so inflame voters that the Republicans would do even worse than is currently predicted.

Interesting. 

In that case let's hope Trump fires Sessions at the end of  October. Let that be the October Surprise. That would be better than bombing North Korea.

Then we could begin to speculate who Trump will attempt to appoint (I say "attempt" because Democratic senators will filibuster).

Top of the list could be Rudy or Chris Christie (remember him?). Or perhaps from Trump's world of reality TV--Judge Judy, Judge Jeanine, Judge Nepolitano, or Laura Ingraham who is a lawyer.

Perhaps most confirmable by the Senate is, why not, Lindsey Graham.