See what's going on

Let me make sure I have this right. According to the New York Times this morning, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is pulling his support for climate change and energy legislation because he is upset that the Democrats are going to give priority to immigration reform. In other words, Graham is going to kill climate change and energy legislation because he does not believe the Democrats are doing enough to pass climate change and energy legislation. No, it doesn't make any sense to me, either.

(To be clear on this, the climate change bill should be the priority. It should have been the priority a year ago. We really, really need to stop delaying on this. But let's be clear; if we could get the GOP to face the reality of global climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gases and escape the grip of fossil fuels and the oil and coal industries, we would have had this done long, long ago. Just because we've had one Republican senator who appeared to be willing to try to get things done - so long as he could get something for then industry as well - we'll, you get my point. Anyway, now that Graham was ready to move forward, this bill should be the priority. We all suffer for ignoring it, it's just that everyone can pretend it's not their fault. The time for action - governmental, international, collective and personal - is now.)

Then again, it isn't like this is an unusual strategy for the GOP. Depending on the day, health care reform needed to die because it would deprive health care to seniors, or something like that. Financial institution regulation designed to prevent future bailouts is troublesome because it's designed to cause more bailouts. I think I just don't understand right-wing logic.

Alternatively, I'm just not interested in right wing political maneuvering.

Or perhaps Senator Graham has other motives to try to reassert his conservative credentials to his right flank. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

UPDATE: Via Sullivan, Jon Chait makes a convincing case that I am being unfair given Graham's actual motives:

Lindsey Graham is a Republican Senator from South Carolina. His highest risk of losing his seat, by far, comes from the prospect of a conservative primary challenger. Indeed, I'd say that prospect is far from remote, and Graham is displaying an unusual willingness to risk his political future. He has little incentive to negotiate on these issues except that he believes it's the right thing to do. So when Democrats put climate change on the backburner to take up immigration, and so so for obviously political reasons, Graham has every right to be angry. He's risking his political life to address a vital issue, and Harry Reid is looking to save his seat

At one level, I don't disagree. But here's the thing: the danger that Lindsey Graham is putting himself in is because he is, in one narrow area, trying to "do the right thing." Having a hissy fit and saying you're pissed off so you're no longer going to do the right thing isn't courageous, regardless of motive. The right thing to do is to point out that Harry Reid is playing politics, but that Lindsey Graham is still going to "do the right thing."

But there's the rub, because Lindsey Graham isn't a babe in the woods to playing politics, either. And it's not like Graham's climate change bill is the most courageous bill to help the environment either, devoid of gifts to his conservative and industry pals. The courageous Graham made sure to kill cap and trade; his bill increases federal loan financing for nuclear power plants and removes regulatory brakes on nuclear plant construction. His plan expands offshore drilling. It strips the EPA's authority to regulate carbon. In the words of John Kerry - who is a co-sponsor of the bill - it includes "huge" financial support for the coal industry.

Now maybe all of that is necessary to achieve any bill. And, as I have made clear in the past, I am not an absolutist. I understand incremental progress and the fact that you cannot always get the best deal in our hyper-partisan political environment, that the ridiculousness of the filibuster allows one GOP senator to set the entire agenda in order to get the magical (but entirely absurd) 60-vote supermajority. Sometimes qualified, imperfect progress is the only progress possible.

The fact remains that this bill is only politically risky for Lindsey Graham because the GOP - his party - is dangerously insane, willing to destroy America, the environment and anything else that comes between them and political advantage, fundraising and cynical manipulation of a substantial portion of the American populace. The need for courage to counter a dishonest or clinically insane or purely malicious insistence by 40 percent of the Senate that climate change is a fantasy of the left seeking to destroy business and unite the world under some Gaia-based eco-theology or whatever it is they claim is depressing at best. A compromise bill that provides so many gifts to industry and polluters, which Democrats would support in a second (there will be bickering, sure, but they're Democrats) just to make some of progress on the issue of global warming and energy independence, should be an easy sell, if all of the players were honest and committed to doing the right thing.

Unfortunately, they are not. Instead, it is a moral quest for one lone Republican, displaying what we must accept as incredible courage of conviction.

I see Lindsey Graham's dilemma.

But it's a dilemma of his own choosing. Count me off of the list of people who are moved to deep sympathy.