As of right now, despite all of his troubles, Donald Trump is still he figurehead of the Republican party. In order to stay there, however, he is not only going to need to avoid trouble, he is going to have prove he can get Republicans elected.
The chance remains that the party will eventually be forced to cut ties with Trump. According to Mark Sanford, it will be clear that they plan on doing so if Lindsey Graham turns on his close pal.
Sanford served almost two terms as South Carolina’s Governor and later in the House of Representatives. He told The Guardian’s David Smith of Graham, “We started in Congress together and he’s very much of a different school on these kinds of things and adapts where he needs to adapt to hold power. But I would use him as a canary in the coalmine and the degree to which he has doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on Trump says everything. Whether you like him or not, he has a good political nose for his base. He knows South Carolina well and his reading the tea leaves is not to be dismissed.”
The former GOP lawmaker continued, “I am a citizen with no country. I am an unabashed conservative in the Jeffersonian sense and right now, if you believe in those ideals, you certainly don’t find it in the Republican party and it’s even been lost within the movement itself of late because there is no movement.”
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The odds of Graham turning on Trump are slim. It would probably take a severe legal issue in order for it to happen.
Todd Neikirk is a New Jersey based politics and technology writer. His work has been featured in psfk.com, foxsports.com and hillreporter.com. He enjoys sports, politics, comic books and spending time at the shore with his family.
