WASHINGTON—In one half of the Capitol, citizens lined up solemnly to pay respects to the late Congressman Elijah Cummings, lying in state in a corridor right outside the chamber of the House of Representatives. At the same time, in the other half of the building, increasingly ludicrous White House castrato Senator Lindsey Graham was holding a performative press conference regarding a stupid senatorial resolution condemning the process by which the House was roasting El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago, and if the confluence of those two events doesn't prove that The Great Whoever has the red ass for humanity, I don't know what more you need.

In summary, these are the following things that Lindsey Graham professes to believe:

1) That it is the impeachment inquiry alone that has driven down the president*'s poll numbers.

2) That a closed hearing in which Republican congresscritters on the relevant committees are allowed to ask questions is the equivalent of "Star Chamber" proceedings—as far as we know, nobody's getting their ears cut off—and that those same hearings have shut out those participating Republicans "for all practical purposes," whatever the hell that means, although it has something to do with the delegation from the Wild Kingdom that bum-rushed the closed hearing on Wednesday.

Lindsey Graham is singing for his supper. Bill Clark Getty Images

3) That the current proceedings bear no resemblance to the impeachment inquiries into Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, in the latter of which Graham was a House manager, which has resurfaced a plethora of YouTube and CSPAN video clips from 1998 that prove what a sycophantic embarrassment Lindsey Graham is in 2019. This is all nonsense and, ultimately, all Graham has to stand on is the Mother-May-I? argument that the full House didn't vote on a formal impeachment inquiry.

For example, when Terry Moran of ABC pointed out to Graham that, indeed, in the Nixon impeachment, the evidence gathering process was done largely in secret prior to a report to the full House Judiciary Committee, and that the process began in October of 1973, nearly three months before a vote on an inquiry was taken, Graham found refuge in some of the most embarrassing bafflegab in the history of the Congress.

Here's what I'm saying. Nixon eventually resigned. Peter Rodino [the House Judiciary chairman at the time] designed the process. I remember the Watergate hearings. I remember the Watergate hearings very well. Jim Rogan, who was an impeachment manager with me on the Clinton administration, went up to meet with Rodino to try and find out how they did it, and Newt [Gingrich] knows this better than I do. The American people were not with us on Clinton when it came to substance, but I do believe that the process mirrored Watergate way of doing business. I remember the Watergate hearings. I don't remember any hearings in public about whether or not Donald Trump did something wrong in the Ukraine.

I have read that text backwards and forwards, and I have had dogs sniff it, and I have run a metal detector over it, and there is not a splinter of a smidgen of an iota of an answer to Moran's question in there. Lindsey Graham's transformation into a complete tool is now complete.

(In fact, by the fall of 1973, everybody in Congress was fed up with how slowly the Nixon impeachment seemed to have been going. Judiciary Committee counsel John Doar was working in almost complete secrecy. Tip O'Neill, then the House Majority Leader, even leaned on Rodino to pick up the pace. Rodino told O'Neill to get stuffed and stuck to his schedule. Nothing Graham said on Thursday was any different than what Republicans, and some Democrats, were saying to Peter Rodino in 1973.)

Of some interest are the co-sponsors of his new resolution. By five o'clock Thursday afternoon, he claimed 44 senators had signed aboard the Pequod with him. Conspicuous by their absence were incipient retirees Lamar Alexander and Johnny Isakson, as well as Nearly Dead Man Walking Cory Gardner, the entire Alaska delegation of Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski, the inevitable Susan Collins, Rob Portman and, of course, Mitt Romney, Man of Principle. Also Mike Enzi, but I think his phone may just have been out of juice.

This will not affect what the House is doing one whit. There will be public hearings, probably as early as mid-November, which is two entire weeks from now. Whatever will we do? Lindsey Graham will continue to sing for his supper down the street, and still get stuck with the check anyway.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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