South Carolina Republicans Pick Lindsey Graham’s Replacement While the Swamp Hands Out Senate Seats Like Family Heirlooms

Let me tell you something. I’ve been watching this South Carolina Senate mess unfold from my kitchen table between packing lunches and checking homework folders, and I have had just about enough of the way these people operate.

Lindsey Graham dies on July 11. Tragic, sure. Prayers for the family. But before the man is even in the ground two weeks, what happens? Governor Henry McMaster appoints Graham’s sister, Darline, to fill the seat. His sister. Like the United States Senate is a family furniture business and somebody’s gotta keep the store open.

Now I’ve done my research on Darline Graham. She ran the South Carolina Commission for the Blind. A public administrator. A disability advocate. Perfectly fine work. But somebody explain to me how that qualifies you to be a United States Senator. Because from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t. It qualifies you to run a state agency. And last I checked, the Senate has a slightly bigger job description.

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But President Trump endorsed her. Fast, too. He got on a tele-rally Monday night and said she “looks so nice, but she’s actually tough and strong.” She looks so nice. That’s the pitch? I’ve got a nine-year-old who looks nice. I’m not sending him to Washington to vote on sanctions and federal judgeships.

Here’s what really gets me. Darline Graham herself told reporters she’s not really an expert on the federal budget like her brother was. She said, and I am not making this up, “I know the family struggles so I’m an expert on the family budget.” Ma’am. The federal budget is not your family budget. Your family budget is whether you buy store-brand cereal. The federal budget is six trillion dollars and my children’s future tax burden. These are not the same thing.

And the mailers. Oh, the mailers. Super PACs are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars sending flyers to South Carolina voters calling her “President Trump’s Choice” and “Prepared to Carry on Lindsey’s Legacy.” Carry on his legacy? What legacy? The man spent twenty years in Washington making deals and voting for things that made my grocery bill double. Some legacy.

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Meanwhile, you’ve got ten candidates crammed into this race with about two weeks to campaign. Ten! Rep. Ralph Norman, a House Freedom Caucus guy who actually knows the federal budget, is running. Rep. Russell Fry is running. Former Governor Mark Sanford literally carried two piglets into the Statehouse lobby last week named Pork and Barrel, which, honestly, is the most honest thing a politician has done in years because at least he’s showing you what he’s about.

And then there’s Mark Lynch, the businessman who ran against Lindsey Graham in June and got called a “lunatic” and a “disaster for the Republican Party” by the president himself on social media. Trump called the man a lunatic. Now Lynch is back running again. You cannot make this stuff up.

The Republican Party of South Carolina is staging this whole thing like it’s a fire drill. Two weeks of campaigning. Voters calling around asking who to vote for because nobody knows who these people are. One Republican activist down there said it plain: “Everybody’s calling around trying to find out who to vote for, because they don’t know the candidates.” That’s not democracy. That’s a blind taste test with my children’s representation in Washington.

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Here’s what I know. A Senate seat is not a inheritance. It’s not a keepsake you pass down to your sister like a gravy boat at Thanksgiving. South Carolina voters deserve a real choice with real time to make it, not a compressed beauty pageant where the winner is whoever the establishment already picked.

And if this thing goes to a runoff on August 25, which everybody seems to think it will? Good. Maybe then South Carolina parents will get a few more weeks to actually figure out who they’re handing the keys to.

Because I promise you this. The bureaucrats in Washington are counting on you being too busy with back-to-school shopping to notice they just turned the Senate into a family reunion.