Is Republican Senator Lindsey Graham being “slimed?” The newsweekly The Week raises this issue and offers a solid roundup. But it’s subhead really capsualizes what is occuring:

A conservative activist says the moderate GOP senator is a closeted gay who’s being blackmailed into supporting immigration reform. Is Graham being slimed?

The fact that the activist is using this argument underscores a few things:

1. To some activists in both parties it is beyond their comprehension when someone of their party does not agree with them on an issue — whether that person is a centrist or just someone who may see an issue differently. Centrists, independents and moderates are used to what comes next: there is an attempt to go after the person who dares to disagree…claiming they are fakes, or really of the left or right, or changing the subject (the issue upon which they disagree) to turn it into a personal attack. It’s as if many partisans have watched too many magicians and all are programmed to use “misdirection” to try and score political points by taking attention away from an issue and turning the person who dares disagree into the issue. (In the blogosphere this comes from periodic demands by other bloggers to fire this or that blogger or they’ll blast a website, or demand that a post they don’t like on another website be removed immediately — as if anyone who wants to start a blog can’t do so, where they can control their own content and have anyone who they wish and post whatever they and others wish. It’s like a big scramble to censor and control other persectives).

2. To some on the left and right, Graham is not a moderate. Why? Because some in both parties and on the right or left insist a real moderate is whoever shares their views (even if they think Barack Obama was not born in the United States or if they believe the U.S. government was behind 911 or that Elvis is alive and owner of a chain of pizzarias.)

3. Just think about at what is at play here. Because Graham sees an issue differently, it’s suggested that there MUST be a chance he’s being blackmailed and it’s being said he is gay when he has never said he is.

How about the fact that — whether you agree with him on anything or not — Graham simply sees it this way through his own life’s prism?

How about the possibility that on some issues he’s more independent than anyone’s checklist of where they need to be if they are “real” conservatives (a checklist on which most likely Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan would not score well).

If you go to The Week link it’s clear most Republicans don’t like this path of attack. And for good reason: if Republicans in general and conservatives in general start making sexual preference a way to take out those who are or aren’t Republicans, they will lose in the long run since younger voters don’t consider this as big an issue as older voters.

FOOTNOTE: In the space of about a week we’ve seen this attack on Graham (because he disagrees with a conservative) and a conservative blogger claim a potential Supreme Court nominee is gay (denied by the White House).

Do we see a really smelly, reprehensible pattern here?

How about just passionately debating issues rather than trying to paint an image of someone that may or may not be correct so that some segment of voters will hate him and not trust him?

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