There was a development in the Senate on Thursday to which more attention should be paid. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, was announced as the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Four or five years ago, this would be seen as a run-of-the-mill appointment out of a Republican majority. Now, though, it's a damned unnerving prospect, because nobody is really sure who Lindsey Graham is anymore. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Graham was as tough a critic as there was concerning El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago. Among other things, he called the current president* a kook, the world's biggest jackass, and a race-baiting, xenophobic bigot.

Graham defends Brett Kavanaugh’s honor. MICHAEL REYNOLDS Getty Images

Of course, the president* remains all those things. Graham, however, has since gone so deeply into the tank that he may at this point have grown gills. His definitive performance as a lapdog was during the Judiciary Committee hearings into the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, when, red-faced with hysteria, Graham determined that the perfectly legitimate questioning of Kavanaugh regarding Christine Blasey Ford's allegations was, in his own words, "the most unethical sham since I've been in politics."

And now, Graham's running that same committee, and the early returns are not promising. Leaping onto the electric Twitter machine, Graham announced his new appointment, saying:

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I’m honored to be selected as Chairman of @senjudiciary.



I will do my best to continue down the path charted by Senator Grassley of having a fair and vibrant committee process.



The confirmation of conservative judges will be one of my top priorities as Chairman. — Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 9, 2019

He has drunk deeply of the administration*'s store of purple Flavor-Aid. That last sentence confirms it. His job, as he sees it, is to stock the federal judiciary for the next 40 years with whomever the Federalist Society hands to the president* as a prospective judge. Expect more hysterics if the balance of the Senate changes in 2020.

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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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