Here is this week’s comedy relief:

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Sunday that he was considering a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, becoming the latest potential contender in an increasingly crowded field.

The idea of Graham running for president is inherently silly, and it probably won’t amount to much, but for my part I hope he goes through with it. I assume that the purpose of a quixotic Graham campaign would be to promote his toxic cocktail of hard-line foreign policy and “centrist” immigration views. In the absence of another McCain campaign, Graham would be the obvious substitute for his fellow amigo and would advocate for the same terrible policies that McCain supports. However, if he decides to run Graham would divide an already divided field of hawks and create one more obstacle for the so-called “establishment” candidates to overcome in South Carolina.

Because he is a senator from South Carolina, Graham would presumably have some support in the state’s early primary, and that support would almost certainly come at the expense of the other hawkish “centrists” in the field. The downside is that his presence in the race would likely drag most of the candidates in an even more more hawkish direction, but in the process he would make it that much more difficult for any one of the most hawkish candidates to prevail. Just as conservatives have repeatedly weakened their cause by having too many of “their own” candidates, Republican hawks may end up sabotaging themselves by having too many hard-liners running for president at the same time. Meanwhile, the sheer comedy value of having the arch-alarmist Graham in the race will be hilarious to watch.