‘There’s a deal to be had’: Graham could revive immigration reform as chairman
If Lindsey Graham leads the Senate Judiciary Committee next year, he would be well positioned to craft a compromise on immigration — but first he has to win Trump over.
By BURGESS EVERETT and ELANA SCHOR
| 08/02/2018 05:05 AM EDT
Lindsey Graham has painstakingly developed a chummy relationship with President Donald Trump — but he may soon be the Senate’s point person on an issue that sharply divides them: immigration.
The South Carolina Republican is in line to take over the Senate Judiciary Committee next year after a potential game of musical chairs in committee leadership. And though Graham’s centrist leanings on immigration don’t jibe with Trump’s hard-line politics, his growing closeness to a president he once openly loathed may prove the best hope for reform in the Trump era.
After a 2016 campaign spent predicting that the GOP would be “destroyed†if Trump was its nominee, these days Graham has become one of the president’s loudest defenders.
That’s given Graham real cachet with Trump, even as he hasn’t shrunk from tangling with the White House on immigration and seeking out bipartisan compromise. Should the GOP keep control of the Senate next year, the deal-making senator may find himself in an unusually high-profile position to sway the president and the Republican Party.
The shift would require current Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to swap his gavel for the Finance Committee chairmanship. And a growing number of Republican sources say it’s likely Grassley will jump, leaving Graham to preside over the powerful committee with jurisdiction on the nation’s borders.......
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/02/lindsey-graham-senate-trump-757329Nearly half way through his presidency and it is possible Trump may be positioning himself to turn on his voters on the matter of immigration.
