The last of the ‘Three Amigos’ bids farewell as US-Israel relations enter a new phase:
Washington has been puzzled for weeks by the condition of outgoing Republican senator Mitch McConnell, who finally emerged on Sunday after being hospitalized in mid-June.
This took a backseat following the sudden death of Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who, unlike McConnell, was seeking re-election in November and had much more public service left to contribute.
Both men, but more so Graham, were part of the Republican old guard on foreign policy; They supported aggressive military intervention around the world—especially against Iran—and closer relations with America’s traditional allies.
Graham was the last surviving member of the so-called “Three Amigos,” along with Republican senator John McCain and Democratic independent Joe Lieberman, who shared similar hawkish views on national security.
He was also an old-school Washington character. A. 2010 New York Times Magazine profile He noted that Graham couldn’t cook and was fond of Chick-fil-A, Baileys liqueur and almond schnapps.
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If you invited Graham to dinner, “you never know if he’ll sit down for an intelligent conversation or get drunk and throw up in the fish tank,” Louisiana senator John Kennedy wrote in a recent book.
But the South Carolinian was known for his enthusiasm for deploying the U.S. military. Kennedy also wrote: “If you want to surprise Lindsey, ask her to name a country she can’t bomb.”
Graham was a staunch supporter of Ukraine. He led a bipartisan effort to impose severe secondary sanctions on countries doing business with Russia, particularly for buying Russia’s “blood oil.”
He returned from Ukraine on Saturday night (US time), just a few hours before his death; where he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky and announced that he and other senators had reached an agreement with the White House to finally agree on a version of the sanctions bill.
And the 71-year-old was arguably Israel’s strongest advocate in the US Congress. Indeed, on Sunday morning (Washington time) a shocked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on NBC. Meet the Press mourning the loss of a “dear friend.”
Netanyahu said Graham was so confident that the two countries’ security interests were intertwined that he opposed reducing U.S. aid to Israel, even if Netanyahu favored it.
“He would argue with me… And I said, ‘Lindsey, we can get by with a smaller number.’ He said, ‘No, you can’t.’ Then he would go to the Senate and outbid the Israeli prime minister.
Netanyahu added that Graham was tireless and never wavered in his support. “He said, ‘I’m clearly on Israel’s side, I know the winds of fashion blow the other way, I don’t care.’”
These headwinds come in the form of a significant shift in sentiment toward Israel among young Americans, including Republicans. one in may Times/Siena’s poll of potential or likely Republican voters found that 63 percent of 18- to 44-year-olds opposed the United States providing additional military or economic support to Israel: 45 percent strongly opposed.
They are voiced by prominent media figures such as Tucker Carlson, who has gained a legion of young fans by questioning U.S. support for Israel, condemning the war against Iran, and accusing Trump of being “Israel first” (the same phrase used by the regime in Iran).
Last year, Carlson described Graham as “really bad” and a “sick dude” after the senator told a Republican Jewish Coalition summit that he was proud of the GOP because “we’re killing all the right people and cutting your taxes.”
Graham said at the summit that weird people might espouse anti-Israel sentiments while sitting in their basements, but to win elections as a Republican, you have to be pro-Israel. However, there is still some varying evidence.
Vice President J.D. Vance, 41 and likely the next Republican presidential candidate, has drawn lines in the sand regarding U.S. support for Israel and recently warned that the country needs to “wake up” to its current situation in the world.
Douglas Rossinow, a historian and professor at Minnesota Metro State University who wrote a book on American Zionism, struggles to name Graham’s contemporaries who would continue his pro-Israel interventionist thinking in full force.
Rossinow notes that Graham is a creature of the 1990s, when the Republican Party was fervently pro-Israel, and of the Newt Gingrich revolution in Congress.
“I guess time will tell how much will change now,” he says. “Clearly there is change in the younger intelligentsia and some grassroots activists at the base of the Republican coalition and the conservative movement.”
Rossinow says people like Graham, Trump and possibly even former president Joe Biden are the kind of people for whom Israeli cities and towns could name streets.
“[But] They pass through the political scene one by one. The gerontocracy in the United States are those who believe in the old-time religion of ‘support Israel no matter what’.”
Graham was a throwback in other ways, too: By most accounts, an old-school southern gentleman with a knack for reaching across the aisle with good humor in an increasingly partisan and uncompromising Washington.
Trump takes the stage Meet the Press He said Sunday he would call Graham if he needed to make a deal with Democrats. Indeed, the two men talked during Graham’s final hours, not knowing what would happen. “He was like a member of the family to me. It’s actually very difficult,” Trump said.
Despite their policy differences, Vance said Graham has the best sense of humor in the Senate.
Most of the immediate praise came from Democrats. Biden, who served with Graham in the Senate, said that although they often disagreed vociferously, they had a common understanding of the importance of public service.
And the former president’s son, Hunter Biden, recalled a 2015 documentary in which an emotional Graham called the senior Biden “the best person I’ve ever met in politics” and “as good a man as God ever created.”
It’s cliché to say upon a man’s death that we will never see his like again, but in Graham’s case it may be appropriate.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political correspondent in Canberra.Connect with: X or email.
