Lindsay Graham: RINO Chameleon

Judging by Lindsay Graham's vote against the debt limit bill, he must be getting worried 4 years early.

Last year and earlier this year, the South Carolina Republican Senator was a periodic target of former Fox News program host Glenn Beck. Beck rightly pilloried Graham for having become a closet progressive.

Suddenly, Graham is trying to look and act like a Tea Party activist. Funny, though, how he was absent from the big Washington Tea Party rallies on 9/12/2010 and during the final stages of the Democratic push on ObamaCare.

Jim DeMint, his Senate colleague from the same state, however, was very visible.

I'm thinking that with Nicki Haley's election as a very conservative governor of his state, Graham is worried that he's going to be challenged from the right when he runs again in 2014.

My earliest memories of Graham are from my college days, when he and two other then-Democratic Representatives- Phil Gramm of Texas and Trent Lott of Mississippi- all deserted their party to become GOP members. They were known as the Boll Weevils. All subsequently ran for the Senate and won there, too.

Gramm left the Senate quite a few years ago. Lott was effectively forced out for comments taken by the liberal media as racist.

Though Graham hasn't made a major faux pas like that, he's long in the tooth now. Too many years, I believe, cutting deals and changing patterns like a chameleon to remain in power.

Now, he's just a RINO trying to slip on Tea Party colors while hoping nobody will notice. With luck, either he'll decide to retire after this term, or get shellacked by some young, truly conservative Republican in South Carolina.