Lindsey Graham's Sister Will Keep Seat Warm For Nancy Mace Or Trey Gowdy Or Satan Or Whoever

Or maybe the Democrat Annie Andrews???

Ha ha ha, what a charmingly bloodthirsty card he was.

Lindsey Graham has been dead for less than 48 hours as we write this, and the race to replace him is in full grotesque swing. Normally we might find the speed with which people started lobbying for themselves to be handed his Senate seat kind of gauche — the doctors had barely called the time of death before the news reports naming possible successors started popping up — but Graham was such an obscenity of a human being that frankly, his replacement can take the oath as part of his funeral service with their hand on his casket instead of a Bible for all we care.

Graham did enough damage in his 30 years in Congress that will last for decades; we don’t need to linger putting him in the rearview.

What comes next, you may or may not be wondering? Well, the first step is that South Carolina governor Henry McMaster gets to pick a replacement who will serve out the rest of Graham’s term, which runs through the end of the year. Late on Monday afternoon, McMaster announced he had chosen Darline Graham Nordone to step into Lindsey’s fuzzy but VERY BUTCH slippers. This has now happened.

Yes, Nordone is Lindsey Graham’s sister. She had Donald Trump’s endorsement, which is as good as the Lord’s voice booming out of the sky telling McMaster what to do. Nordone was super-close to her brother, who basically raised her after their parents died.

Remember when Lindsey suggested during his brief presidential run that Darline could be one of his retinue of first ladies if he became President? Then Trump crushed Graham and the rest of the 2016 field and Graham briefly toyed with pretending to have moral reservations about Trump before attaching his lips so firmly to Trump’s backside that he’ll probably have to be surgically removed before he can be buried.

About the only biographical information we can find on Nordone says she’s a mother of two who has worked “helping people with disabilities find jobs.” If any of those disabilities included full-blown sociopathy, then she’s perfect for a Senate seat.

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President Lindsey Graham Doesn't Need First Lady, Hos Can Just Take Turns

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It’s a pretty sweet gig for Nordone. The Senate is in session for all of 11 of the last 25 weeks of this year. When it’s in session, senators mostly only work from Tuesday through Thursday. No one will expect anything of her. She shows up, votes for a few bills, attends a few meetings of whatever committees her brother was on, cadges a few expensive dinners off of lobbyists, and then heads back to the Palmetto State, where people will call her “Senator” for the rest of her life.

Frankly, if it didn’t mean having to spend even one minute of our only life on Earth around the likes of Ron Johnson and Tommy Tuberville, we might have been tempted to throw our hat in the ring.

We were so hoping McMaster would think outside the box. Make all the contenders do shots and the last one to pass out wins? We are talking about Lindsey Graham’s seat-filler replacement here, it would only be fair.

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Sloppy Sexxxy Drunk Lindsey Graham Way Better Than Regular Kind, Still Won’t Be President

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Here are some of the names we have seen floated as permanent replacements. Some or all of them may still throw their hats in the ring for the August 11 primary. Stay tuned:

Trey Gowdy: Former congressman, Fox host, and winner of every Tilda Swinton lookalike contest ever. Tim Scott, the other South Carolina senator, was pitching his name almost the minute he learned about Graham’s death. It’s a conundrum. On the one hand, Gowdy has legislative experience. On the other, would South Carolinians tolerate being represented by a walking Halloween costume? Who knows?

Nancy Mace: We thought we were rid of Mace forever after she came in fifth in the Republican primary for governor. She did so poorly that we imagine she would have zero chance in an election to replace Graham. But that’s what makes it fun!

Just in case anyone has any doubts about whether Mace wants the gig, she tweeted this before Graham’s autopsy was underway:

The Trump White House hates Nancy Mace and is vowing to spend millions to make sure this does not happen.

Scott Bessent: An openly gay senator from South Carolina? How novel! Bessent, the current Treasury secretary, lived in Charleston for years. He and his husband sold their old home, a pink mansion that would not have looked out of place in the Barbie movie, in 2025 for $21 million. Bessent reportedly still has another home in the state, so he would qualify. Why not take his smarmy, snotty, better-than-thou attitude and his annoying and ever-present squint to the Senate? Of course we’d all be at risk of Trump naming one of his own children as a replacement at Treasury, which would make it easier for him to openly haul bags of cash out of the building. Which is another reason Trump might encourage him to run.

Joe Wilson: Mr. “You Lie” saw his name pop up in news reports and immediately shot down the idea.

Mark Sanford: He’s put the Appalachian Trail behind him and he’s already proven he can get elected post-boning-a-woman-who-wasn’t-his-wife scandal when he won a congressional seat in 2013. We don’t know if he’s interested, but at least we could dust off some old jokes.

Nikki Haley: Sure, why not, we’ve missed her whole “sweatily trying to walk the line between reasonable moderate Republican and batshit panderer being tricked into saying slavery didn’t cause the Civil War” shtick.

Alex Murdaugh: Might be tough to run from a prison cell in the middle of his retrial, but let’s be honest, Lindsey Graham contributed to the murders of way more people, and he was on track to win a fifth term.

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The Sunday Shows Say Goodbye To Lindsey Graham

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There are some other names floating around: South Carolina’s lieutenant governor, Rep. Russell Fry, who knocked off his district’s former rep, Tom Rice, in 2022 after Rice voted to impeach Trump over January 6 and Trump in turn went scorched-earth to get him out office. We don’t know who any of the rest of them are, and therefore we don’t care.

South Carolina Republicans will hold a special primary on August 11 to pick one of these or some other reprobate to replace Graham as the nominee. The winner gets to run against Annie Andrews, the South Carolina pediatrician who won the Democratic primary in June.

Is this race even competitive, or is the seat so safely red that the voters could nominate a sack of pig knuckles with an R next to its name and still win? Ironically, just before Graham’s death, the Andrews campaign released a poll showing the doctor trailing him by only three points, within the poll’s margin of error.

Now, this was an internal poll, so it should probably be taken with an entire salt mine’s worth of salt. But if it is correct that this race was more competitive than one would expect with Graham in it, and the Republicans nominate someone who has all of three months to introduce himself to the voters, in a year that all polling indicates will be terrible for Republicans, well, things could at least get interesting.

OPEN THREAD.

[POLITICO / Newsweek / Daily Beast]

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