As Philip Klein notes, the most obvious result of Dick Lugar’s primary loss last night is that it will produce a state of absolute fear among Republicans in Congress who might cross the aisle to compromise on anything, ever.
[Richard] Mourdock’s victory not only means that this particular Senate seat is likely to be more conservative (assuming he goes on to win the general election in this traditionally red state), but it also puts Republican Senators everywhere on notice that no seat is safe anywhere in the country. Any elected Republican that doesn’t pursue a small government agenda once in office risks suffering the same fate as Lugar. Had Lugar hung on, then a lot of people would have dismissed the Tea Party as a passing fad from 2010. But now it’s clear that the movement has been underestimated once again. Tea Partiers have a lot more staying power than skeptics expected.
In other words, it’s a recipe for more abuse of the Senate rules, more filibusters, more hostage-taking, more government shut-downs, more stonewalled political and judicial nominees, and more defaults or near-defaults on our sovereign debt. In other words, for Mr. Klein, it’s a positive development. He goes on to suggest that the only way to prevent the “ideologically malleable Mitt Romney” from lurching left in office is to put more implacable Tea Partiers into the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.
Dick Lugar is the GOP’s longest-tenured senator and he knows his way around the upper chamber. In his concession speech last night, he had some advice for the victor:
If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good Senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington. He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party. His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook. He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it.
This is not conducive to problem solving and governance. And he will find that unless he modifies his approach, he will achieve little as a legislator. Worse, he will help delay solutions that are totally beyond the capacity of partisan majorities to achieve. The most consequential of these is stabilizing and reversing the Federal debt in an era when millions of baby boomers are retiring. There is little likelihood that either party will be able to impose their favored budget solutions on the other without some degree of compromise.
You can sum up the difference between Lugar and Mourdock this way: Lugar was interested in being an effective legislator; Mourdock is interested in advancing a movement. Being an effective legislator requires crafting compromises and building cross-party coalitions to address pressing problems facing the country. However, if your goal is to shrink the federal government down to a size where it can be strangled and drowned in a bathtub, then no compromise is necessary or desirable.
Dick Lugar focused on foreign policy, national security, and nuclear non-proliferation. His accomplishments in these fields were possible because he worked with Democrats like Sam Nunn and Barack Obama. His defeat creates a serious risk that our foreign policies will become hopelessly politicized in the Senate. Next year, John Kerry may very well replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Based on seniority, that would place control of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the hands of Barbara Boxer of California and Bob Corker of Tennessee. Sen. Boxer has so far struggled to work with Republicans on the Environmental & Public Works Committee, which she chairs. For all her virtues, she is no Teddy Kennedy. Sen. Corker has shown some small signs, here and there, that he was being mentored by Sen. Lugar. He has an opportunity to follow in his footsteps a bit, at least in how the Foreign Relations Committee conducts its business, which has always been much more cordially than other committees in Congress. But Sen. Corker is no Dick Lugar. Would he or could he have ushered the New START Treay through the Senate? Working with Boxer? I don’t think so. The fear induced by Lugar’s defeat makes it even more unlikely.
I’m normally somewhere between bored and disgusted by the hagiographies Beltway reporters write about fallen centrists. I could write a long diatribe about all the ways Dick Lugar has failed this country and been deeply and catastrophically wrong in his votes. It’s not that he was a saint or that our fates were safe in his hands. But his defeat is an almost unmitigatedly bad thing for our country. The only way it can be made partially good is by the Democrat, Rep. Joe Donnelly, winning the seat and helping to keep the U.S. Senate in Harry Reid’s control. On some issues, a Senator Donnelly might make us long for Evan Bayh, but at least he will add to rather than detract from the functionality of the Senate.
