We could say he catches on quick, but we’d be lying. Maybe a few others who actually did attract some small, meager demonstration of support among Republican voters in this race will join in and clear it out for the field to shrink (as I requested in the American Spectator last week)…

“Today, I am suspending my campaign for president,” he said.

“I want to thank everyone who has taken this journey with me, you have honored me with your support,” Graham added.

CNN first broke the news after Graham told the network of his plans in an interview.

The hawkish senator barely registered in polls, and never graduated to the main stage in GOP debates.

Graham had hoped his experience on national security — he is an ally of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee — might give some life to his campaign.

But he never gained traction in the crowded field. As of Monday, he was averaging 0.5 percent in RealClearPolitics’ average of recent national polling and never scored higher than 2 percent in any major national poll throughout his campaign.

Even in his home state of South Carolina, where he had briefly led earlier this year, Graham has fallen down into the low single digits.

“I got into this race to put forward a plan to win a war we cannot afford to lose and turn back the tide of isolationism that was rising in our party,” he said in the video.

“I believe we have made enormous progress.”

Here’s Graham’s getting-out-of-the-race video, which as of this writing has 389 views on YouTube…

What’s irritating about this is the formulation that if you’re not a wild-eyed proponent of sending American troops off to die in some Middle Eastern craphole in the vain hope that American occupation will somehow make Germanys and Japans out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, you’re an isolationist.

That’s an insult to the American people, not just the other Republicans in the race. Graham, as John McCain’s special little friend, has been one of the most poisonous voices in the Republican Party in terms of what he’s done to the Republican brand, and it’s good that the voters have rejected him.

The Bush era of reckless interventionism and nation-building in the Muslim world, which Obama has continued with less actual competence and civilizational confidence, needs to be over. What, within the Republican Party, should replace it is a commitment to killing terrorists wherever they are – and little else. Find friends there, reward them, punish betrayals and stop pretending to care about the well-being of people who allow themselves to be governed by Islamist zealots.

Graham would send troops to corners of the earth where there is zero American national interest. He championed Hillary Clinton’s forcible removal of the Qaddafi regime in Libya and the arming of Al-Qaeda in Syria. Those were disqualifying, and now he’s disqualified.

If he wants to call that progress, so be it. We call it progress that the irrelevant Lindsey Graham is no longer in the race.