On the menu today: Just as Americans were prepared to receive bad news about the hospitalized Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell . . . the shocking news arrived that South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham had suddenly died, reportedly from “an aortic dissection, in which a tear occurs in the inner layer of the main artery.” (Considering the enemies Graham had, and the propensity of certain hostile regimes to use poison in assassinations, it’s understandable to have suspicions, but so far no evidence points in that direction.) This morning, a wide-ranging collection of appreciations for Graham and his legacy; meanwhile, one of my distinguished colleagues has developed . . . the pro-life Kardashian beat. Read on.

Lindsey Graham’s Impressive Legacy

On the surface, Lindsey Graham was easy to mock. He was short and slight, and deep into his U.S. Senate career, he still looked young and had a boyish energy. He was more than comfortable playing the sidekick to other bigger-name GOP figures — first John McCain, then Donald Trump.

He never married, which led to lots of rumors about a private life that he mostly kept just that — private. (In his memoir, he mentioned a girlfriend in his years in law school, and two during his time as a JAG in Germany.) A member of the U.S. Air Force’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps before becoming a lawmaker, it wasn’t hard to mind either leftist critics or more macho types rolling their eyes and insisting that didn’t really count as military service — never mind that as a reservist, Graham did short stints in Iraq twice — in April 2007 and August 2007 — and in Afghanistan in August 2009. Graham would be the first to say he never served in combat, but any work on a U.S. base in either of those countries involved accepting a degree of personal risk. (The notion that certain kinds of military service don’t count illuminates the bad-faith nature of the “chickenhawk” label.)

While Graham spent his 23-year Senate career advocating for a lot of causes, he was best known as a hawk. In some circles, that position gets denounced as being a warmonger, but hawkishness largely amounts to wanting to see free people remain free, to see unfree peoples get freed from the authoritarians that oppress them, and a willingness to take steps to pursue those goals.

The tributes pouring in for Graham since word of his death Sunday morning deserve to be seen as the senator enjoying the last laugh. The guy who was supposedly merely a sidekick somehow became one of the most important conduits between the president and Republican senators, the indispensable man getting the executive and legislative branches to row their oars in the same direction. Graham won a lot more policy fights than he lost over his career, and he somehow often kept the respect of his Democratic colleagues.

Graham was supposedly a relic of an earlier Reaganite time, and yet here we are in the middle of 2026, and the “America First” president has kept selling arms to Ukraine; put Nicolás Maduro in jail and made Marco Rubio the de facto “viceroy” of Venezuela; bombed the heck out of the Iranians throughout the year; scared the Cuban government so it keeps emphasizing it is willing to negotiate to avoid a U.S. invasion; and next year’s defense appropriations are going to be, at minimum, $100 billion more than last year, if not $500 billion more.

If, as Graham’s critics insisted, he was such a loser . . . why did he keep winning?

In contrast to many other Republicans who ran against Donald Trump and lost, Graham figured out he could get more done with Trump as an ally and developed a genuine friendship with the president. (Trump’s first Truth Social post about Graham’s passing called the senator, “one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known.”) The editors of NR observe Graham’s effectiveness:

That his foreign policy was increasingly out of fashion in a GOP with a growing isolationist wing didn’t faze him, and through his relationship with Donald Trump, he won many internal GOP battles.

He was also a committed pro-lifer, a constitutionalist, and an advocate of limited government. When he got his teeth into an issue, few were as dogged or effective. He turned in a particularly memorable performance defending Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings.

Graham had a large pragmatic streak. He was always looking for the maneuver or deal that would best advance the ball. This is what brought him to his accommodation with Trump. After denouncing him in harsh terms in 2016, he became a confidante and golfing buddy of the president’s, constantly trying to bend Trump his way. Graham would occasionally dissent in public but otherwise did everything necessary to preserve the relationship and found himself defending conduct that surely would have appalled him a few years earlier.

Noah Rothman remembers Graham’s scorching, impassioned defense of Brett Kavanaugh against smears during the Supreme Court justice’s confirmation hearings:

Yes, it was a fiery exchange that summoned a lot of theatrics. But Graham channeled a sentiment that both animated and united Republicans at a time when the bitter debates over Donald Trump’s ascension to the top of the GOP’s ranks were still quite raw.

It’s easy to forget the strength of the cultural currents against which Graham bravely struggled in this clip. Democrats probably hope that you’ve forgotten. The casual bigotry they promulgated, the sordid and baseless allegations they made, not just against Kavanaugh but anyone who shared his accidents of birth, would become features of the “woke” discourse that was soon to consume the country.

Dan McLaughlin:

As much as he was a political animal who gloried in the fray, Graham did, in fact, have a core. He was tireless in defense of America’s interests and allies, an implacable foe of its enemies, and devoted to getting conservative judges on the courts. South Carolina’s hawkish, veteran-heavy electorate rewarded him again and again for that. He visited Ukraine ten times since Russia’s invasion, and he met with Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday; the Ukrainian people had no better friend in Washington, as Zelensky’s tribute reflects.

Our John Fund remembers an interview with the senator last year and writes, “Graham looked back on his career with satisfaction and gratitude. ‘I thank the Lord and my parents that I’ve done pretty well for being just a cracker named Graham.’”

Our old friend Jay Nordlinger shares a story of Graham’s wit:

He and I were participating in the same conference and we were sitting at the same table when he was being introduced. The introducer said that Graham had become the top vote-getter in South Carolina history.

I leaned over to him and said, “More than Strom [Thurmond]?”

“Yes,” said Graham. “Don’t tell him. He’ll come back.”

Michael Brendan Dougherty:

I met Lindsay Graham while he was campaigning in New Hampshire for a profile piece I never finished. From my questions, he quickly figured out my foreign policy perspective was Buchananite. He relished debating it out, made honest admissions against interest when we got deep in the weeds on the Houthis, and had far more in-room charisma than I expected. He was a funny, magnanimous and extremely effective advocate for his views, especially where I disagreed with him. R.I.P.

The good news is that elected Democrats who worked with Graham are remembering him with genuine affection and grief. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote:

What can’t be forgotten is the reason why so many people he worked with — from senators to staff — will mourn his loss: Lindsey had a zest for life and the Senate that made you want to get to work on a bill with him or at least debate him. He brought joy to his job.

Lindsey Graham was the one who was willing to work with me (when so few would) on helping the Afghan refugees. I remember standing outside of a little phone booth in the Republican cloakroom last year as he spoke with the Vice President, holding up a sign that said “Save the Afghans” and he put the phone on hold and said “OK OK I will go on your bill even if it gets me in trouble.” Or his early willingness to lead on big tech bills, including repealing the provision that protects them from consumer suits.

But mostly my fond memories of spending time with Lindsey (and we travelled the world with John McCain) was not about the ups and downs of his policy positions. It was about his love for the world, his loyalty to hard causes and his friends, and the pure joy he brought to life. I will miss him.

I wonder how many Democrats even remember that Graham voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan; Graham cast those votes in the closing days of the era when senators believed that if a judicial nominee was sufficiently qualified, a senator should vote to confirm him, even if the senator disagreed with the nominee’s philosophy.

In announcing his vote for Kagan, Graham said Obama “chose someone who is qualified to serve on this court and understands the difference between being a liberal judge and a politician. At the end of the day, it wasn’t a hard decision [. . .] She would not have been someone I would have chosen, but the person who did choose, President Obama, chose wisely.”

(Note that in 2022, Graham voted against Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Her record is overwhelming in its lack of a steady judicial philosophy and a tendency to achieve outcomes in spite of what the law requires or common sense would dictate.”)

Gracious bipartisanship did Graham limited good at the hour of his death; the spastic attention whores made sure the world knew they were glad Graham was dead.

As noted, I have family in South Carolina, and as a result I often got to visit during those primaries where usually a handful of little-known conservatives insisted that Graham had been a squish and a sellout, and that they were the right man or woman to replace him. The challengers often argued that it was obvious and self-evident that Graham had been some terrible disappointment as senator.

In 2008, Graham won 66 percent in the primary against one opponent; in 2014, 56 percent against six opponents (including Nancy Mace); in 2020, 67 percent against three opponents; this past spring, 56 percent against five opponents.

Each cycle, the voters of South Carolina, in both the primary and general election, said, “Nope, we’re quite happy with him right where he is.”

He will be missed.

ADDENDUM: Our Kathryn Jean Lopez writes about surrogate parenthood and . . . Khloe Kardashian. Apparently, back in 2021, Kardashian and her then-husband were contemplating surrogacy when they were informed that the mother “can terminate the pregnancy with any unplanned outcome.” Whether or not any of the Kardashians think of themselves as pro-life — Caitlyn Jenner supports states establishing their own laws on abortion — it was a gripping moment where the celebrity couple realized that one possible consequence of “my body, my choice” was them not being allowed to have the child they desperately wanted.