Lindsey Graham replacements, ranked

As we have all seen by now, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has passed on to whatever awaits him in the next life. I have a lot of personal theories about what that might be, but never mind, let's think about the future. After all, someone will replace him. Who could it be? State Republicans have a big job to do and I like to be helpful, so here are some ideas.

The Citadel is a military college in South Carolina that my husband, a Marine veteran, likes to make fun of. Although I am a native of Virginia, and I am more familiar with the Virginia Military Institute and its associated horrors, I think he's right to laugh at the Citadel. As far as I can tell the only good thing about the Citadel is this dog, which is a mascot. The dog goes by the nickname G3. He works about as hard as Lindsey Graham once did (RIP) and he is probably the least unsettling option that South Carolina Republicans could nominate.

If they can't get G3 they should recruit this guy. As a professional spokesman for malevolent entities, Weyoun has the experience they want. Although he isn't a good person he is arguably less malicious than the other possibilities at hand.

Who is this guy? What's his deal? Who knows. I don't think he's up to anything nice but he is so mysterious that he has some plausible deniability, which recommends him over others.

Say one thing for Pazuzu, he's an honest sort. You know exactly what you're getting with him. He is going to take possession and he is going to be horrible and have a great fucking time while he's at it. But here's the secret about demons: you can get rid of them. Those are the rules. It's difficult and a priest might die, maybe more than one, but it can be done. We live in hope.

Nancy Mace might run for the seat and I hope she does. She reminds me of women I used to know. They are always getting up to shit on Facebook. They sit there with their iPads and a glass of Chardonnay and cause upheaval amongst their extended families, their church congregations, and their small towns. The southern United States simply would not be the same without them.

Can you believe this fucking thing stood in Nashville for two decades? Well, I grew up on the border of east Tennessee, so yes I can. (To be fair, the statue was on private land, erected by a man who would later bequeath $5 million to his border collie, Lulu. Now, I'm not attacking the city of Nashville. I'm just saying the south is a complicated place, which contains people like Lulu's daddy, and for a while, Lindsey Graham (RIP) and this statue.)

People said the statue made Nathan Bedford Forrest look stupid and it certainly did, but we must remember that we are talking about the first Grand Wizard of the KKK. I choose to believe the statue was true to life, that Forrest had this face on him, like one of the vampires in Buffy when they are going to do something evil. Forrest was born and died in Tennessee but I'm taking an expansive view of things. Spiritually this is where many southern Republicans happen to be. I have ranked him next to last because he is a statue.

We have reached the bottom of our list and so we greet The Corpse of Strom Thurmond. This ancient racist died in 2003 at the age of 100, but before then, he led one of the longest filibusters in congressional history to try and block the Civil Rights Act of 1957 from passing. According to The Village Voice, "Aides tried to avoid defeat by the toilet by setting up a bucket in the cloakroom where Thurmond could pee, keeping one foot on the Senate floor while doing so." Obituaries of the ghoul noted his "retreat" from segregationism but he never publicly apologized for his record. Not that everyone cared. "Strom Thurmond had four kids after age 67. If you're not willing to do that, we need to come up with a new immigration system," Lindsey Graham (RIP) joked in 2015. I don't think Graham meant Essie Mae Washington-Williams, who Thurmond fathered with a 16 year-old Black domestic worker when he was 22, but now I digress.

Thurmond and Graham are in the same place now, so with the right Ouija board or the medium from Poltergeist, we can ascertain Graham's wishes while replacing him with a spirit who truly had his finger on the pulse of the Republican Party. This would be terrible for everyone, but things are already bad. Let's see what happens!