Compromising with Graham

In an alternate universe, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham might be someone the Democrats could work with on Social Security. But in this universe, the Republican leadership has made it perfectly clear that they have no interest in constructive engagement with the Democrats. Matthew Yglesias got it right from the Democratic perspective when he said:

The dynamics here are painfully familiar. First Lieberman will come up with a plan in collaboration with moderate Republicans. Then the GOP Senate leadership will "reluctantly" agree to line up Republican support for the moderate plan. Then the moderates and Democrats alike will be totally cut out from the conference committee, which will return a bill bearing no resemblance to what passed the Senate. At this point, the moderate Republicans will support the conference report, leaving the Democratic compromisers in an untenable situation.

You would think that Democrats had seen enough of these kinds of legislative tactics to avoid getting played the same way on Social Security, but with people like Lieberman, who likes to posit himself as the last non-political man in politics, you can't rule anything out.

Republican "moderates" like Graham, however, are coming at this from the other side. Graham knows his own party's playbook, and that means that he can have no illusions that any compromise he manages to hammer out with Democrats will ever make it to the President's desk. Democrats who want to work with the GOP on Social Security are either egotists or fools. But Republicans who want to work with those Democrats are two-faced.

In the modern GOP, the job of the moderate is to create the cover necessary for the far right to pursue their agenda. And Graham is doing that job admirably.