When the strange political force that would become Trumpism began to take shape eleven years ago, Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina who embodied the GOP’s interventionist wing, denounced Donald Trump as unfit for the presidency. Trump had promised to end what he called “stupid wars,” and Graham had entered the 2016 presidential race in part to smother the anti-war sentiment simmering inside the Republican Party before it could become something more than a factional irritant.
The senator later admitted he couldn’t bring himself to vote for his party’s Republican nominee. “I voted for Evan — whatever the guy’s name is,” Graham said after the election, referring to Evan McMullin, the conservative who ran as an independent and won just 0.54 percent of the vote.
