Some in the America First camp also noted that Graham was willing to battle with their wing and its media allies head on in a way that some of his GOP counterparts with higher political aspirations were not — a move they grudgingly respected.
“Not only was he a hawk, but he was willing to be the Great Satan of the sort of realist restrainer camp,” said Curt Mills, executive director of the American Conservative magazine. “What you don’t see from [Senate Majority Leader] John Thune or Tom Cotton is a desire to be on Tucker Carlson’s bad side, be on Steve Bannon’s bad side. I think that matters. Lindsey Graham didn’t care. His goals were bad, but in that sense, his political courage for what he believed in was an asset for the hawks.”
And Graham’s commitment to the fight wasn’t rhetorical. He died shortly after returning from yet another trip to Ukraine, the kind of relentless, hands-on advocacy that made him uniquely difficult for anti-interventionists to oppose.
Still, not all of the president’s America First allies see Graham’s death as a boon to their cause. Some instead frame him as a bridge between a still-hawkish Senate GOP conference and a more anti-interventionist White House — someone who was able to move between both camps in a way that actually helped the America First cause.
“It actually hurts the America First movement if we don’t have establishment senators who are willing to give America First views a fair hearing, the way Graham did. He inserted kind of an interpretive bridge between the two sides. He did a lot for America First foreign policy,” said Alex Gray, a former NSC official in Trump’s first term. “Because he was so passionate about his view of America’s role in the world, he chose to be that bridge.”
Patrick Wilson, a first term Trump administration official and technology lobbyist, said there is no clear person who can fill Graham’s shoes.
“Sen. Graham was a true believer in American liberty and our role in the world. He often reminded student groups, when they came to the Hill, that no other country in the world had to struggle with the conundrum of whether to make other men free,” Wilson said. “There isn’t a natural successor in the president’s immediate circle.”
Alex Gangitano contributed to this report.
