I don’t know enough inside baseball to know exactly why Lindsey Graham is doing this. But I do know it’s the sort of thing that in the past earned him the rage of conservatives, and rightly so.

That Graham is willing at this point—even after the extreme hostility, demonizing, lack of cooperation, and utter disrespect displayed by Obama personally and this administration generally towards Republicans—to work with Obama on this matter is difficult to understand or justify. I’m with Andy McCarthy on the substantive problems with this agreement:

The good parts of the deal will be either things we’d have gotten anyway (like no civilian trial for KSM) or unenforceable (like promises that the Obama administration will be more open to using options other than the criminal justice system for top terrorists). The bad parts will be horrific, and no matter what Senator Graham says, he can’t do a thing about them: The place or places where the terrorists are held will become targets that we will have to spend tons of money to protect; the tons of money we have already spent to make Gitmo a first-rate, ideally secured facility, will be lost; and, most significantly, the physical presence in the U.S. of the detainees will mean they are unquestionably in the jurisdiction of the federal courts, where judges will be able to say the Constitution requires all sorts of remedies, including release.

And remember, all of this will be based on the fiction that Gitmo foments anti-U.S. terrorism — and to the extent the U.S. reputation in the world has been tarnished, much more of that has been done by the politicians who’ve attacked Gitmo than by the facility itself, which is a model.

And yet Graham forges on. His motivation is unknown to me, but here are some guesses:

(a) he really does believe that “bipartisanship” is some worthwhile goal in and of itself
(b) Obama has promised him something, and he’s naive enough to believe him
(c) he disagrees with McCarthy and believes that without an agreement Obama would be going the civilian justice route
(d) he likes the limelight and the power this gives him as the person to break an anti-cloture vote

The current situation in the post-Scott Brown election Senate is that, even though Brown gave the Republicans the magical 41st vote to stop cloture, it only works reliably when the Republican Party stands solidly and firmly and unanimously together (or if a Democrat or Democrats join them). Any Republican who goes against the group instantly becomes more spotlighted and more powerful than before—wooed and fawned over and catered to by the Democrats.

In the present case, Graham says he has two other Republicans ready to join him (wonder who they could be? My guess is a couple of women from Maine). So even if a few Democrats, or Joe Lieberman, vote with the Republicans against this, it’s a done deal, and Graham’s the “bipartisan” hero. However, I agree with McCarthy that Americans will be the losers. But hey, we’re getting used to that, aren’t we?