National

Eschewing the advice of poet Dylan Thomas, Lindsey Graham ended his campaign with a whimper, not a bang.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told CNN's Kate Balduan on Monday that he was dropping out of the 2016 race. The South Carolina senator said he was satisfied with how his unsuccessful campaign played out. “The one thing I feel really good about is I did it with a smile on my face," he told Balduan. "I talked about things that are important to me, and somebody better fix one day." Graham said that he planned to remain active in shaping Republican Party politics. "I will suspend my campaign. I'm not going to suspend my desire to help the country," he said.

Here are the revised standings:

Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post on the “great fracturing of the Republican Party”:

It is no longer possible to think of “the Republican Party” as a coherent political force. It is nothing of the sort — and the Donald Trump insurgency should be seen as a symptom, not the cause, of the party’s disintegration. It is no longer possible to think of “the Republican Party” as a coherent political force. It is nothing of the sort — and the Donald Trump insurgency should be seen as a symptom, not the cause, of the party’s disintegration. It makes no sense anymore to speak of “the GOP” without specifying which one. The party that celebrates immigration as central to the American experiment or the one that wants to round up 11 million people living here without papers and kick them out? The party that believes in U.S. military intervention and seeding the world with democratic values or the one that believes strife-torn nations should have to depose their own dictators and resolve their own civil wars? The party that represents the economic interests of business owners or the one that voices the anxieties of workers?

Andrew Prokop of Vox says the nomination of Donald Trump [or Ted Cruz] would likely be an utter disaster for the GOP.

It's a debacle for Republicans that would have been unimaginable at the beginning of this year. Yet it's happened so slowly, and so gradually, that the reaction from GOP elites still appears oddly muted. Even as summer stretched into fall, they kept comforting themselves by saying that it's still early — accurately pointing to the fact that early polls have frequently been wrong in the past, and that outsider candidates like Trump have lost in the past. Yet Tuesday night's debate was the final GOP debate of 2015 and could well be the year's last major campaign event. Before you know it, Christmas will be here, and New Year's will follow soon afterward. And then we're in January, and there's just one month before voting begins in Iowa on February 1. So it's definitely time for the Republican establishment to hit the panic button.

It has been a hell of a year. Wingnut reactions to things have ranged from predicable to entirely predicable. But “worst to best” doesn’t really fit. This list, is more ranked from "worst" to “even worse still”. 10) “The liberal media..(anything)” All of wingnut bluster about how liberal the media is goes back to a 1986 study that found that a majority of journalists at national media outlets such as The New York Times, and WaPo were Democratic voters. As if reporters had some kind of say in the political leanings of “the media.” It is laughable and you’d really have to have your head up your ass to observe that we have a “liberal media” while you watch your “One America News” (on a TV implanted in your descending colon) because Fox has gone soft.

I sometimes check in to Red State for some Schadenfreude. After Tuesday's debate, Leon Wolf, a Cruz and then Rubio supporter, was very displeased.

…people who realize that Trump represents an existential threat to the credibility and future existence of the conservative movement as a political force have been forced to grind our teeth as Cruz - who really has been a champion for our causes - held fire on this charlatan for months. Now we are treated to the spectacle of Cruz treating Rubio in the same way many of us wish he had treated Trump from day one? It’s frankly galling.

A existential threat to the future EXISTENCE of the conservative movement. LOL. I agree. Go Trump!

UPDATE: Congressional Candidate, Bryon Sort has called for Congress to lift the ban on gun violence research, and "to start supporting a data-driven and scientific approach to a solution." No word yet from Coons or Carney.

Dylan Matthews reveals the real winner of the GOP Debate last night: Hillary Clinton.

If you asked Hillary Clinton to rank her preferred general election opponents in order, odds are that Cruz and Trump would top the list. Trump is a candidate almost tailor-made to energize Latino turnout and turn the demographic even more strongly pro-Democratic. And Cruz has most of Trump's substantive liabilities plus has proposed a massive 16 percent sales tax on everything. Both of them are extremely potent boogeymen to get base Democrats enraged/energized. And none of them have the ability to make inroads with young and Latino voters that Marco Rubio has. And so when Trump and Cruz win a debate, Clinton implicitly wins the debate as well. She's getting exactly the Republican primary she wants, and it shows no signs of getting worse for her anytime soon.