Right now, tonight, I can’t do Dick Lugar justice. I’m not in the mood to research his voting history over the last 36 years for examples of both sensible effective legislating and ckickenshit conservative conformity. In the 14 years that I’ve really been paying close attention to the Senate (dating to l’affaire Lewinsky), Sen. Lugar has been a consistent conservative on fiscal and social issues and a much better than average Republican on national security and international relations. I guess he was for gun control back in the early 1990’s, but I’ve seen no sign of that lately. But, really, that’s not my point. I like Sen. Lugar because I like how he comports himself. I think he’s a man who keeps his word. I think he’s about as fundamentally decent as I can ever consider an economic conservative to be. So, yes, he’s my favorite Republican senator. If that’s a reason for the Republican voters to oust him, I guess that’s too bad. It’s too bad because I don’t like him for how he votes. I like him for who he is. And that’s despite the fact that Sen. Lugar really disappointed me very deeply on a couple of occasions during the Dubya administrations. I lost a lot of respect for him in those years. Despite that, I still like him and I still consider him the best senator the Republicans have to offer.
Even so, I’d like a Democrat to take Lugar’s seat. These are six-year terms we’re talking about, and control of the Senate is up for grabs. It’ll be a lot easier to defeat some unknown tea-party radical than the venerable and respectable Dick Lugar. Lugar is so formidable in a general election that the Democrats didn’t even challenge him in 2006. And 2006 was a great year for Democrats running for Senate. We need Lugar’s seat, but I’m not going to kid myself that we’d be gaining much. Our candidate is an anti-choice Blue Dog Democrat who might make us all remember Evan Bayh fondly. His own poll shows him getting smoked by Lugar but with a modest lead over the tea-bagger.
In any case, the advantage of having Democrat Joe Donnelly in the Senate over Republican Dick Lugar is minimal, and limited mostly to the insurance it provides against control shifting to the GOP. It’s nice having Lugar partner with John Kerry as the heads of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If Lugar loses and Kerry becomes the next Secretary of State, as I expect, then that committee will be headed (most likely) by Barbara Boxer and Bob Corker. No disrespect to Sen. Boxer, but that’s a big downgrade and a giant leap in partisan rancor on foreign affairs.
My last observation is that Lugar doesn’t deserve to go out as some kind of turncoat traitor. He’s served his party and this country with distinction and dignity for four decades, and it’s really a shame that he’s being blistered as some kind of Benedict Arnold. And I say this as someone who agrees with Lugar about 2% of the time and who thinks many of his votes have been completely unconscionable. If it serves as a mark against the man that even some progressive Democrats can see and appreciate his humanity and decency, then the GOP has really gone off the rails.
I hope he loses his primary. But a part of me will be a little more optimistic if he doesn’t.
