Politics & Power Quote by Lindsey Graham

“Red hot” is the kind of phrase politicians reach for when they want to sound like they’re reporting the weather, not stoking the fire. Lindsey Graham’s line works because it pretends to be an observation about rising temperatures while quietly justifying a full-scale partisan alarm system around the courts. The point isn’t that judges have politics; the point is that talking about “the politics of judges” primes the audience to see rulings as factional combat and confirmations as battlefield triage.

Graham has long understood the Supreme Court as a mobilizing engine: nominations drive turnout, fundraising, and party discipline in a way few policy fights can. By framing judicial politics as “getting to be” hot, he implies escalation and inevitability, as if polarization simply happened to the institution rather than being actively engineered through procedural hardball, messaging campaigns, and purity tests. It’s a subtle absolution: nobody’s responsible; everyone must respond.

The phrase also does a neat bit of blame-shifting. “Politics of judges” can be read as criticism of jurists who “legislate from the bench,” a familiar conservative charge. But it can also be heard as an indictment of the confirmation process itself. That ambiguity is useful. It lets Graham speak to voters angry at court decisions, to senators anxious about norms, and to activists who want a fight, all at once.

Context matters: post-Bork, post-2000, post-Garland, post-Kavanaugh, the judiciary became a proxy legislature. Calling it “red hot” isn’t analysis; it’s a rally call disguised as a temperature check.