One of the more common parlor games in online political circles these days involves analyzing one of the most stunning makeovers in Senate history. I'm speaking, of course, of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, onetime wingman to the late "maverick" John McCain, who was widely assumed to be his successor as the leading independent Republican in the U.S. Senate. Instead, for whatever set of reasons, Graham has become Donald Trump's obsequious majordomo.

McCain's reputation was inflated, of course. He was most often a doctrinaire conservative who voted the party line. But there were occasions when he would step outside the box and sometimes it made a big difference. Graham would often follow him, fashioning himself as a "common sense" kind of guy who didn't follow the crowd although even back in his first Senate term he showed he was willing to break the rules. In one overlooked perfidious act, Graham and Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona conspired to put a fake floor debate into the legislative record to back up their argument in an important enemy-combatant case before the Supreme Court. So Graham's willingness to play dirty has always been there.

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Graham ran for president in 2016 and while he was far from alone in criticizing Donald Trump, he was among the most cutting of all the prominent Republicans who went after him. He said at one point, "I think he's a kook. I think he's crazy. I think he's unfit for office," and called the future president a "race-baiting xenophobic bigot." He told CNN, "You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell!"

As one would expect, Trump returned the favor saying, "He’s one of the dumbest human beings I’ve ever seen" and “He says, ‘I know so much.’ He knows about the military? I could push him over with a little thimble.” One might have thought that Graham, the junior maverick, would have taken on the role of the loyal GOP opposition as his mentor McCain did. But Graham has gone the opposite way, becoming the most sycophantic of Trump supporters in the upper chamber of Congress. The aforementioned parlor game revolves around the question of why he is doing it.

Consensus seems to be that Graham had to do that in order to retain his Senate seat in South Carolina, where Trump is very popular. It's kind of sad that a favorite son has built up so little good will in his home state after two decades, but apparently Trump trumps hometown loyalty for most Republicans.

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Graham has taken this to such lengths, however, that it's pretty clear that there's more going on than his own 2020 re-election. Plenty of other senators are facing the voters in Trump-friendly states without feeling the need to turn themselves into fawning lackeys.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo theorized on Twitter this week that this is a character issue rather than a strictly political one. He wrote: