GUEST POST BY DAVE MILLER

 

In 586 BC, the prophet Ezekiel delivered a highly specific and bizarre warning against the wealthy, heavily fortified Phoenician island-city of Tyre. He declared that God would bring many nations against it, stating:

 

"They will destroy the walls of Tyre and pull down her towers; I will scrape away her rubble and make her a bare rock... They will throw your stones, your timber and your rubble into the sea."

 

The exiled people of Israel would wait approximately 254 years before witnessing an extraordinary realization of Ezekiel's words.

 

In 332 BC, Alexander the Great conquered Tyre, using rubble from the mainland city to build a causeway across the sea to the island fortress.

 

This story of enduring faith, and the long wait for the realization of prophecy, is one of many that Christians and Jews have turned to for hope in desperate situations.

 

Recently I found myself thinking of that prophecy and of the late Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina.

 

I remember painting houses by myself during the Clinton impeachment proceedings. Each day I would arrive at my job site, get my radio set up to listen to NPR, and get to work.

 

Graham, an Air Force lawyer, was one of the House impeachment managers. I listened as he prosecuted the case against President Clinton. Graham impressed me, and as a mostly conservative Democrat, I found myself agreeing with him.

 

I thought he had, as they say in politics, legs.

 

So when he decided to run for president in the 2016 election, I was listening.

 

In July 2015, Graham warned about Donald Trump…

 

"I think he's a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican Party with the Hispanic community."

 

And in March 2016, Graham was even more unequivocal.

 

He warned that Trump would be an "absolute, utter disaster" for the Republican Party, destroying conservatism as he knew it. Republicans, he predicted, would be wiped out, and recovery would take generations.

 

Another Republican presidential candidate, Marco Rubio, offered his own warning that March.

 

Speaking about Republicans who supported Donald Trump, Rubio said:

 

"For years to come, there are many people on the right... [who] are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump..."

 

In another interview, Rubio warned that Republicans were becoming a party driven by fear rather than optimism.

 

"If we're going to be the party of fear, we're going to spend some time in the wilderness."

 

He added that Republicans would pay a political price in November and beyond.

 

Those were remarkable warnings, coming not from Democrats, but from two men seeking to lead the Republican Party.

 

And yet, none of those words seemed to matter.

 

Donald Trump won the 2016 election, lost in 2020, then stormed back to power in 2024.

 

Along the way, both Graham and Rubio eventually became supporters of the man they had warned would destroy their party.

 

The prophets, it seemed, had abandoned their own prophecies.

 

Then the people struck back.

 

After a decade of frustration, setbacks, and occasional victories, Democrats broke through in November 2026. The United States of America prevailed.

 

The Democrats didn't just win an election. They won control of both houses of Congress. They captured governorships and legislative seats in places that had long been Republican strongholds.

 

And in state after state, the political landscape was mightily transformed from red to blue.

 

Consider:

 

•           Texas had not elected a Democratic US senator since 1988.

•           Democrats had not controlled Arizona’s state government since 1966, when Barry Goldwater was a US Senator.

•           Kansas had not elected a Democratic US senator since 1932.

•           Mississippi is on the verge of electing it’s first black senator since Reconstruction.

•           South Carolina, Lindsey Graham's home state, elected a Democrat to his former Senate seat.

•           In Georgia, Democrats swept all 10 statewide offices for the first time in over 20 years.

 

As Ezekiel prophesied about Tyre, The GOP walls were broken. The towers were pulled down. The stones and timbers were thrown into the sea.

 

That historic reality brought me back to the two men who, ten years earlier, had warned their fellow Republicans about the consequences of embracing Donald Trump.

 

Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.

 

Prophets, in a political sense, who saw something coming that many in their own party refused to see.

 

In 2016, an angry country stepped forward and took a chance on Donald Trump, despite multiple warnings from people who knew the Republican Party from the inside.

 

Meanwhile after the devastating loss, Democrats spent the next decade organizing, campaigning and refusing to surrender their belief that the country could eventually take another direction.

 

That came true Tuesday, November 3, 2026. A political “wrecking ball.” An “utter disaster” for Republicans. And, in Marco Rubio's own words, a journey “into the wilderness” for the GOP.

 

There's one final irony in all this.

 

Both Graham and Rubio recognized the danger in 2016. Both warned their fellow Republicans about it. And both eventually embraced the very man they believed would bring disaster upon their party.

 

Perhaps that's the most remarkable part of this story. It wasn't that nobody saw what might be coming.

 

And ten years later, their prophecies came true.