Shades of the Ides of March: Senate dysfunction

Lindsey Graham’s no deal

By Dana Milbank, WashPost, Friday, February 15, 9:36 AM

Lindsey Graham is turning himself into the mad dog of Capitol Hill.

First, the Republican senator from South Carolina opposed Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be defense secretary because of Hagel’s foreign policy views. Then he argued that Hagel had not produced sufficient background material. Now he’s arguing against Hagel because of the administration’s handling of the attack on U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, last September — when Hagel was a professor at Georgetown University.

“I am going to fight the idea of jamming somebody through until we get answers about what the president did personally when it came to the Benghazi debacle,” he said in the Senate TV studio Wednesday, a day before his unprecedented filibuster of a nominee to a national-security Cabinet post.

“How do you respond to critics who say you’re just moving the goal posts?” CNN’s Dana Bash asked.

“Oh, I’m going to take every opportunity. I’m not denying it,” he answered.

(More here.)