President Trump packed the Myrtle Beach Convention Center Friday night to rally for Sen. Darline Graham, the woman he pushed to fill her late brother Lindsey’s seat after his sudden death in July. She’s headed into a GOP runoff Tuesday against Rep. Ralph Norman, and the usual suspects are circling.
Here’s what happened. Graham got asked a national-security question at a debate and said she’s “not that informed on national security” and that “national security is not my thing.” The beltway crowd clutched their pearls. Nikki Haley, who never met a camera she didn’t like, pounced. Mark Sanford, the man who once told us he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was actually in Argentina with his mistress, endorsed Norman hours before the rally, saying “the stakes are too high.” Bless his heart.
Since when does Mark Sanford get to lecture anybody about stakes? The man disappeared from his job as governor to chase a woman in South America and thought nobody would notice. But sure, let’s hear him out on qualifications.
Here’s what I saw with my own eyes from the coverage. Trump stood up there and said what any honest person already knows. “She was just being honest,” he told reporters. “It hasn’t been her thing, but she’s surrounded by very good people.” He said she understands that national security is his thing. And he’s right. You know what I’d rather have? A senator who admits what she doesn’t know instead of one who pretends she knows everything and then votes for whatever the lobbyists hand her. Lindsey Graham was a foreign policy hawk, God rest him, and the same people now trashing his sister spent years trashing him too.
Graham herself handled it the way you’d want. “The critics say I shouldn’t run for the senate. They say I’m not a politician. You know what I say? Guilty as charged,” she told the crowd. They loved it. She reminded everybody that Trump had never held elected office before 2016 and has done a “damn good job.” That’s the whole point, isn’t it? The professional politicians gave us decades of empty promises and trillion-dollar deficits. Now they want to tell South Carolina voters that a woman who hasn’t spent her life in the swamp isn’t good enough?
Tim Scott (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsTrump told the crowd to “pretend that I’m on the ballot. Just come and vote.” He warned that Democrats will impeach him again if they take Congress. “You’re going to lose everything,” he said. He’s not wrong about that. The Democrats have been salivating over subpoenas and impeachment hearings since January. Every Republican who stays home Tuesday is handing them the gavel.
Now, I’ll be straight with you. Trump’s endorsement hasn’t been magic lately. He backed losers in Wyoming, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and Iowa. Even Mike Lindell went down in Minnesota. Politico is practically writing Graham’s obituary already. But here’s the thing the smart people in Washington keep missing. South Carolina isn’t Wyoming. This is deep-red country that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in decades. Trump eulogized Lindsey Graham at his funeral last month. The people in that arena Friday night remember that. They remember Lindsey standing with Trump through the hard years. They see Darline as carrying that forward.
Gov. Henry McMaster endorsed her ahead of the rally, saying she “stood firmly with President Trump to advance his America First agenda” while filling out her brother’s term. That matters more than what some debate moderator thinks about Taiwan policy.
The runoff is Aug. 25. Early voting runs through Friday. Ralph Norman is a fine congressman and a solid conservative. Nobody’s saying otherwise. But the establishment lining up behind him, the Haley crowd, the Sanford types, the people who always think they know better than the voters, that tells you everything you need to know about who the swamp wants.
South Carolina folks have a simple choice Tuesday. Vote for the woman Trump asked to run, or vote for the candidate the professional Republican class prefers. Those two things have rarely been the same, and the party has usually been better off when they weren’t.