and Romney and Graham are simply a rapidly dying breed. And most people are just sick of these smarmy charlatans–they are pretty much hidebound flunkies for the cause of evil. They are not usually deliberately evil, but they are easy pickin’s for fundamentally evil causes wearing a pleasing mask–they show unbounded naïveté and are therefore prime “marks.” They are un-evolved throwbacks to a political Jurassic era. They really have no moral anchor–so they easily fall for anything. And VERY few people even like them. On either side.
Conservatives rightly see them as fools and traitors, and Leftists correctly see them as sometimes useful and easily manipulated (though unreliable) allies. They are prototypical “straddlers.” They are NOT fully Left or Right, but in the “mushy middle” and have no strong moorings to anything. So they are unstable and therefore untrustworthy.
And like the dinosaurs, they can’t (and won’t) adapt–and they surround themselves with yes-men, and are never intellectually challenged on their positions.
So the day of their power and influence is rapidly coming to a close–they have become intellectually “flabby” because they ONLY preach to the choir and to spasmodically nodding yes-men.
And it’s just not in their nature to change–they will never leave the DC swampy primordial ooze and walk upright. Their political philosophy is therefore now an electoral dead-end. Yes, voters have changed, but not these dinosaurs!