In our current political environment, opportunities to oust incumbents are rare; opportunities to oust the most notorious incumbents are virtually nonexistent. But once in a while, political circumstances present an opportunity to dispense with the old and bring in the new.
In South Carolina, that moment has finally arrived.
There is no senator more emblematic of the old order than Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). The protégé of John McCain, Graham was the most vicious Never Trumper of 2016. When Trump was taking on the entire Washington establishment, Graham was a fixture on CNN attacking him. After Trump won, Graham said Russia hacked the election.
It wasn’t until McCain died that Graham switched his strategy from opposing everything Trump did to trying to win Trump over to his side with flattery.
Where you stand in pivotal moments matters. When the game was on the line, Graham stood with Jeb Bush (R-Fla.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and the New York Times editorial board.
But Graham’s abysmal record goes back well before 2016. He has a long history of caving to the Democrats on amnesty, gun control, climate change and bank bailouts. The only thing he’s stood up for consistently over the years is needless war, starting with Iraq.
Today, Graham is the most vehement war hawk in Congress. He voted to send hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to Ukraine, supports a regime change war in Iran and is currently pushing for even more sanctions on Russia.
Despite his unpopularity, Graham has never been seriously challenged in an election. Until now.
The architect of Project 2025 is taking on Graham with the fire and fury necessary to defeat him. Paul Dans announced his candidacy for South Carolina’s Senate seat early this month, calling Graham a “childless warmonger with no stake in our country’s future.”
Dans’s candidacy is exciting because he has the political credibility necessary to take on Graham. An original Trump supporter in 2016, Dans has been consistent where Graham has been vacillating. While Dans was putting forth bold proposals as the director of Project 2025, Graham was busy wasting more tax dollars on foreign wars.
Dans made his bones in the Trump movement when John McEntee put him in charge of overseeing the career government workforce during Trump’s first term.
Dans took to the task with energy, taking over federal agencies for the president and restoring White House authority over the career bureaucrats. Dans was effective because he combined his legal acumen with obsessive passion for Trump’s original agenda.
When Trump’s first term ended, Dans began planning for Trump’s comeback by creating the most ambitious plan to upend the government ever conceived: Project 2025.
While Project 2025 was influential, the Trump administration ultimately turned to technologists to implement government reform. Elon Musk’s DOGE team tried to execute cuts but were handicapped by their lack of planning and ignorance of the landscape.
Now, with The Big Beautiful Bill’s failure to deliver DOGE’s proposals, it is clear we need a return to the Project 2025 approach to government.
The spirit of Project 2025 lives on in the candidacy of Dans. We need new blood in the Senate, the most stagnant institution of the Trump era. While many senators have adopted the MAGA talking points out of expediency, their power base remains with the GOP of old.
This is the first battle for the future of the movement after Trump. If we let MAGA’s legacy be defined by Graham, then the Trump 2016 revolution was in vain. The choice is clear: Project 2025 or permanent defeat. It’s up to South Carolina.
James Bacon served as director of operations for Presidential Personnel during President Donald Trump’s first term in the White House.
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