In 2015, the Wildrose Party was outraged the NDP didn’t meet the late U.S. Senator at the airport with a brass band and a bouquet of roses
Lest we forget, fellow Canadians, the late Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, was so unnerved by Donald Trump that in 2016 he admitted he almost wanted to move to Canada!
It must be acknowledged that Sen. Graham, who died suddenly on Saturday after returning from a visit to Ukraine, said he was equally unnerved by Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton in early September 2016, as that year’s U.S. presidential election neared.
“Trump unnerves me to my core, and Hillary Clinton’s performance last night was equally unnerving,” Sen. Graham told the New York Daily News the day after a presidential candidates’ debate. “It makes me want to move to Canada.”
This was after Sen. Graham had given up on his own presidential ambitions at the end of 2015, but obviously still before his experience on the metaphorical Road to Damascus when he realized that Donald Trump was “not far behind God,” or at least the key to his own political survival. As for the literal road to Damascus, Sen. Graham recommended bombing it.
No doubt Sen. Graham’s acknowledgement of Canada as a sane safe haven was spoken rhetorically. Nevertheless, it is said here that we have former Alberta NDP environment minister Shannon Phillips to thank for his fond impression of Canada. (This is the part of this story that used to be known in the newspaper business as “the local angle.”)
Clearly Sen. Graham was impressed by the very nice reception Ms. Phillips put on for him and a couple of other “lightweight” American politicians, Democrat Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and former Republican South Carolina Representative Tom Rice, in August 2015, four months after the election of the NDP here in Wild Rose Country. (The characterization of Sen. Graham as a lightweight, by the way, was Donald Trump’s, not mine.)
Alas, that was not the view of the Opposition Wildrose Party, which went absolutely crackers over the fact Ms. Phillips and premier Rachel Notley didn’t show up at the airport with a brass band, a bouquet of red roses, a bottle of Scotch, and a red carpet to greet the South Carolina Senator when he got off his plane for a quickie tour of oilsands operations near Fort Mac.
With a little help of the elves of mainstream media, the precursors to the United Conservative Party managed to gin this up into a huge brouhaha for a few days – now completely forgotten, as these things tend to be, by everyone except me.
Sen. Graham could become the President of the United States, the furious ’Rosers sputtered, claiming in a news release that they actually published that the newly elected Dippers were “letting Alberta down by almost blowing off top-level delegation.” (Almost blowing off … The Wildrose press release has been lost to history, or at least to the Internet, so I cannot provide a link for readers’ amusement today. This is a pity.)
To be fair to the Wildrose Party, led at the time by Brian Jean, they considered it important enough to get Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo MLA Tany Yao to offer to drive out to the airport – no mean feat, presumably, since no one has ever accused Mr. Yao of being a real firecracker when it comes to performing his duties as an MLA.
The tarsands tourism trio were “top level decision makers in Washington and a visit by them is a big deal,” Mr. Yao grumped in the release. “Yesterday, they spent the day with Premier Brad Wall being shown Saskatchewan’s energy innovations, whose government took their visit seriously,” he complained.
At the time, the NDP was still getting used to being in power and seemed somewhat bemused by this weird Wildrose performance, not having realized it was going to turn out to be standard Wildrose/media operating procedure no matter what they did or said.
The Wildrose Party later alleged that Ms. Phillips only showed up because of their press release, a dubious claim that was nevertheless handled as if it were completely credible by the media. A reporter for The Edmonton Journal, to her credit, tried to contact Sen. Graham for a comment, but her calls were not returned. Apparently it didn’t occur to her to ask Mr. Trump, who had Sen. Graham’s cell phone number and didn’t mind giving it to reporters.
Senator Graham was not a complete stranger to Fort McMurray, having also visited in 2010 and declared the region’s bitumen mining operations to be “acceptably clean” after a half-day tour.
Sen. Graham will not be remembered for his fear of Mr. Trump, his assessment of Canada, or his visits to Fort McMurray, though. As a wise and anonymous commentator observed on Substack yesterday: “You do not get to schedule your last chapter. It gets scheduled for you, sometimes on a Saturday night with no notice at all, and whatever you were doing when the music stopped, that’s the exhibit.”
I believe the sudden demise of this US Senator will have an impact on politics, both in the US and beyond, particularly on the right wing side.
In the gerentocracy US politics is, the Senator wasn’t even really that old. So he may have believed he would have time in the future to distance himself from Trump, when that became more feasible and advisable over the next few years. Of course he won’t get that chance now and unlike his amigo McCain, he will not be remembered as going out with his principles on.
Back to the local angle, I believe this may resonate in Alberta where I feel our local Trumpette is following a similar trajectory as her US mentor, although with some delay. Already a number of those who consider themselves good conservatives have left her caucus. Imagine how much faster things will start to unravel if her popularity, which is already showing signs of strain, starts to fall more.
Now someone say like Brian Jean is a bit younger than the US Senator, so he may be around for a long time. However, this is the sort of thing that causes other people to start to think about their legacy, like some of those conservatives who have already left may have.
There’s much innuendo swirling about the late senator anyone can find, which I will not comment on.
Lindsay made John McCain look like a moderate. There wasn’t a war crime he didn’t love (provided it was done in favour of the red white and blue) and there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t say. (Provided it led to him being permanently re-elected). He literally was quoted as saying that war crime laws only apply to America’s enemies.
At least from the grave he can do no further harm. Happy to hear it.
Graham crackers….
A more holistic understanding of the situation is achieved by also noting the fact that the master’s voice, the center of status and power, is also coincidentally located in Washington. A resource based de facto colonial outpost (51st state) and its government representatives must know their place in the grand scheme of things by being appropriately fawning and submissive and by displaying the correct behavioral cues or signals. So:
1. “The delegation had been invited to tour the oilsands by the former Progressive Conservative government, she noted.”
https://edmontonjournal.com/news/edmonton/alberta/ndp-planned-to-ignore-us-oilsands-delegation-wildrose-says
2. “The U.S. has been an important source of investment and technology in the development of Alberta’s energy industry since the 1940’s.”
“Growth of Alberta’s energy sector, energy trade liberalization under NAFTA, and rapid development of the oil sands have made Alberta an integral part of U.S. energy security.”
https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/ec2376d6-4712-4347-8299-4ff1f5af8fea/resource/1d2cd0fb-da79-4d48-9046-c56b1151ebd4/download/2013-unites-states-alberta-relations-2013-02.pdf
“U.S. firms hold substantial stakes in oil sands production, pipelines, services, and refining infrastructure. U.S. refineries are structurally dependent on Canadian heavy crude. Cross-border pipelines integrate Alberta directly into the American energy system. Dependence is real.”
3. “Who really owns the Canadian oil industry? Behind Canadian oil nationalism, it is the American eagle that pulls the strings and seizes profits.”
https://lactualite.com/lactualite-affaires/a-qui-appartient-vraiment-lindustrie-petroliere-canadienne/
You want the obvious, you will get the obvious:
Lady Lindsay is going to be shocked when he gets to hell and finds out the devil doesn’t care that he’s gay but that warmongering, pushing genocide, advocating for the slaughter of women, children, entire races, moral turpitude, and enabling a psychopath to commit atrocities are the acts that landed him in the sulphur pits.
Lindsay never met a war he didn’t love.
In a peace-loving nation, would anyone show up with roses at the airport for that guy?
I noticed a missing word in paragraph 5. used to known in the, should perhaps have a be inserted so it reads used to be known?
What I always found interesting with Sen. Graham is his flip flopping on Trump. During the impeachment goings on he was all against Trump, but when it came to a vote he didn’t vote to impeach him. Maybe he gave Dingy Smith flip flop lessons?
Thanks, OA. Fixed. DJC
The number of prominent Republicans who assailed Trump using various and often colourful synonyms for “irresponsible” during the 2016 GOP Primaries, but later went on to lick his boots, would stun a team of oxen.
Time wise, it seems unlikely that Graham died in the US. Larry Johnson gives a significant examination of the time line. https://sonar21.com/the-lindsey-graham-timeline-does-not-work-he-died-in-kyiv/
Ah, yes, the late Senator Lindsey Graham probably fell for the old spray-on grass routine, aka hydroseeding, on display at the oil sands plants for important visitors. It never actually grew when I lived there. Did they roll out the artificial turf for him, too?
I’m not sure where in Fort McMurray Tany Yao lived at the time, but his offer to drive to the airport is nothing compared to the downtown commute in my not-15-minute city. Maybe it would qualify as a trip to the grocery store, certainly not the long drive of the doctor’s office or school. Don’t even mention the airport. What a trooper. Did he actually do it?
Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell’s people have issued a statement that reports of his demise are greatly exaggerated. A photo shows him rejuvenated after his medical incident a month ago. No one has seen him. Where is Tany Yao when you need him?
These pseudo Conservatives and Reformers are good at grandstanding, and that’s about it. All mouth and no brains. Do they do anything that helps Albertans? No. They and their rich friends are all that they care about.
You got to hand it to LG. Like the rest of the GOP establishment Graham vehemently opposed Trump when he first burst onto the scene with presidential ambitions, calling him every name under the sun. But he was able to read the tea leaves early on and realized Trump was going to be the new boss. He jumped into the Trump camp, working diligently to endear himself to Trump, eventually earning the title of the official “Trump whisperer.” Trump considered him as part of the family. Say you want about Graham, he was probably most effective political operative of his generation.
Ole Lady G, the long-time flip-flopping senator from one of the Carolinas (I don’t care which one.) has made his last flip. No more ladybugs to muse over.
Once a Trump opponent, he has thrown off his mortal coil, and will never MAGA again. Apparently Mango Mussolini is somewhat perturbed by the passing of his BFF.
Sen. Graham will surely be missed by his UCP confreres but no one else here in Alberta. All said, all done, dead.
That doesn’t seem to be necessarily true. Graham was a hard-core peddlar of the Wall Street Murder Machine program, and that includes both the Ukrainian and Israeli subsidiaries. Plenty of supporters of both kooky atavisms in Alberta, and the way the Yahtzee dice spilled this go-round, it turns out that many of those folks are progs. That picture of Nenshi with the Israeli ambassador sure was something, wasn’t it? Ol’ Lindsay would have been proud! And surely the tarsands enjoys the moral support of more Albertans than just Grift-o-kons! Since everyone abandoned the notion that anthropogenic global warming was a thing, since another thing appeared with this particlar shake-out of the dice, it’s something we can all get behind, like a $100 billion fleet of submarines!
Another Trump clone died. Rest in peace although I do not think he deserves it. As usual we like to consider everyone a saint after they die. Lindsay was not a good person as far as I am concerned and my condolences to the family but that is it.
As far as Brian Jean, no surprise really, he is one of those that would give his soul to be American, in his mind a superior race.