Sen. Lindsey Graham: the insufficient warmongering in the Democratic debate 'made me sick'

Sen. Lindsey Graham was once considered a member of the "respectable" Washington establishment. A conservative, to be sure, but one that was a bit more dignified and rational than the current bowl of nuts sent to the House and Senate by a Republican Party driven to frothing madness after the election of the first non-white American president.

I have no idea why.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said late Wednesday that the first Democratic presidential debate was nausea-inducing.

“It made me sick,” he told host and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on the organization’s “Washington Watch” radio broadcast.

As a reminder, the Family Research Council is a SPLC-designated hate group. Sen. Lindsey Graham is here opining on the things that do or do not make him nauseous while chatting amicably with a group that shares the same hate group distinction as various Klan groups, militias, and skinheads, and with a radio host who furthered his political career by, in 1996, purchasing David Duke's mailing list so that the campaign could properly court Duke's followers. He paid Duke $82,500 for the privilege.

This would be the supposedly respectable wing of the Republican Party, mind you. The one that fills up the Sunday shows every week with deep thoughts; the one that reporters go to when they want to hear the so-called reasonable thoughts of so-called reasonable minds.

“It made me feel so sad that the Democratic Party has dropped so far in defending the nation,” Graham said. "Everybody had an isolationist, disengagement policy with regards to radical Islam.”

Graham has been the most vocal candidate for the need for a third war in the Middle East. This stance is sufficient for him to claim expertise in the area, despite a history of everything else he has advocated for all going to hell in a handbasket in a conspicuous way. He gained this status because even the Sunday shows got sick of seeing John McCain's face.

“Obama is completely incompetent as commander in chief,” he said.

The respectable one, I repeat. The fellow who got in the race because, apparently, he was frustrated that Dick Cheney himself wasn't stepping up to the task of properly telling people that Democrats were doing the Middle East wrong and that it's time for the Respectable Republicans to jump back in and sort this mess out with a good, proper war campaign.

I forget where Graham is, in the polls—somewhere between Bobby Jindal and ebola on toast, I believe—but if anything it's a bit surprising how little traction respectable Republicanism is getting, these days. The voters aren't interested in the hate-group-coddling guy who wants to jumpstart a third Middle East war. They want the guy who has promised to forcibly round up every last undocumented brown person in the nation and put them on trains to the border.