U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is facing a perhaps surprisingly tough race for his re-election. The Cook Political Report currently calls the race between Graham and his Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison a “toss-up,” and just this weekend, the Harrison campaign announced a staggering fundraising haul in the third quarter of 2020. In that quarter, they raised $57 million — which is the most that any U.S. Senate candidate has ever raised in a single quarter. During a Sunday morning appearance on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show Sunday Morning Futures, Graham sounded desperate. He went on an unhinged tirade against Democrats, who he claimed will “structurally change the country” if they win upcoming elections.
In other words, Graham sounds like he’s resorting to trying to energize his base with pseudoapocalyptic claims that Democrats are some kind of threat to the very foundation of the United States. His rhetoric is cultish nonsense, and the current GOP’s propensity to totally write off Democrats as some kind of anti-American conspirators continues to prove disturbing.
Discussing the possibility of Democrats adding seats to the U.S. Supreme Court to compensate for Republicans’ rush to confirm a new Trump nominee with mere weeks to go before Election Day, Graham ranted:
‘It changes America as we know it. If we lost the House, the Senate and the White House they’re going to change the rules of the Senate… so you only need a majority, anything coming out of the House sails through the Senate. They’re going to expand the court from nine to whatever number they need to make it liberal… A liberal Supreme Court is a nightmare for business, it’s a nightmare for social policy… If [Democrats] win, it’s not going to be about a health care debate, they’re going to structurally change the country.’
To be clear: no, adding additional seats to the U.S. Supreme Court would not “change America as we know it.” It just wouldn’t. Graham’s comments are unhinged rhetoric that have little to do with reality. Adding seats to the court would not suddenly erase the rest of the checks and balances system throughout the federal government. Depending on what cases get brought before the court, it might not even mean immediate major changes to the lives of everyday Americans.
As for Graham’s insistence that Democrats would change the rules “so you only need a majority” to pass measures in the Senate — current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) himself has already changed the rules so that simple majorities are all that are needed to confirm U.S. Supreme Court justices (which followed a similar Democrat-led rule change for lower court nominees). Talk about hypocrisy.
During his time on Fox this Sunday, Graham also reiterated his commitment to rushing the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court as the Trump-nominated replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away recently. Graham insisted that Senate Republicans “can easily get her confirmed before the election.” Senate Republicans seem unfazed by the fact that a U.S. Supreme Court nominee has never been confirmed with this little time left until Election Day during a presidential election year.
