09-23-2017, 03:25 PM
Quote:In 2014, one moderate Republican senator made a strong stand against the Tea Party, which he believed was pushing the GOP off a cliff. “Somebody, somewhere, had better up their game, because our country is going in the wrong direction. And if it’s not me, who’s it going to be?” That senator was Lindsey Graham, who went on to comfortably win re-election in the midterms that year.Lindsey Graham Is the Biggest Fraud in the Senate | New Republic
Last week, that very same senator rolled out the Graham-Cassidy bill, the GOP’s last-ditch effort to repeal Obamacare. The legislation has been condemned as the most destructive repeal effort yet. It would eliminate Obamacare’s Medicaid expansions and subsidies, replacing them with state-run block grants. It would reverse the individual mandate, while those with pre-existing conditions would not be guaranteed coverage. Millions of people would lose their insurance, although the exact number remains unknown because the Senate is rushing ahead without time for a full CBO score.
The legislation is about as extreme as it gets, and not only because of the immense damage it would cause. It is also extreme in its nihilism, a bill that has no function, no reason to exist, except to fend off right-wing primary challengers who could pummel incumbents if they fail to vanquish that great partisan bogeyman, Obamacare. It is evidence that no legislator is immune to the pull of extremism in the modern GOP—certainly not Lindsey Graham.

