“I jokingly discuss with Senator Graham as Senator Graham 1.0 and the Senator Graham 2.0 who got here alongside throughout the Trump years, the two.0 being the popular improve,” mentioned Nate Leupp, chairman of the Greenville County Republicans and one in all a number of occasion leaders in South Carolina who mentioned they’d lengthy been cautious of the senator’s “maverick alliances.”
Mr. Graham’s 2016 presidential major bid — a little bit of a lark, meant to vault him to the nationwide stage as a solo act — had been a humiliating reminder of how susceptible he was at residence: When he dropped out in December 2015, he was polling in single digits in South Carolina.
His McCain-esque positions on immigration and commerce, he admits, have been a part of the issue. “I like John McCain. Yeah, he’s accomplished extra to mentor me and assist me than any single particular person in politics,” Mr. Graham mentioned. “However having mentioned that, I’m the senator from South Carolina.”
Maybe probably the most delicate challenge for Mr. Graham was his bipartisan document on judicial appointments.
Mr. Graham had lengthy argued that presidents deserved to have their judicial nominees confirmed, and in 2010, he voted for Mr. Obama’s first Supreme Courtroom nominee, Elena Kagan. It got here at a value: Anti-abortion protesters in South Carolina hanged him in effigy, and when he ran for re-election in 2014, six major opponents popped up, every hammering him for being too liberal on the courts.
Mr. Graham has performed down the episode, however it clearly scarred him.
“I’ve triplets, and I’d in all probability do something, together with breaking the legislation, to guard them. He’s obtained a Senate seat,” Mick Mulvaney, the previous appearing White Home chief of employees, mentioned of Mr. Graham on a latest podcast.
So when a second Supreme Courtroom emptiness opened up in early 2016, Mr. Graham signed on to Mr. McConnell’s refusal to permit a Senate vote on the nomination of Merrick Garland, on the grounds that it got here too near the November election.
And several other individuals described the same willpower to show his conservative bona fides in what was in all probability Mr. Graham’s most memorable public efficiency within the service of Mr. Trump: his outraged protection of Brett M. Kavanaugh, whom he had recognized for a decade, in opposition to sexual misconduct allegations throughout the Supreme Courtroom affirmation hearings in September 2018.