The Pathetic Case of
Richard Lugar
MAY 9, 2012 • BY ELLIOTT ABRAMS
(DO- this blog is, at
best, not coherent and, at worst, misleading.
The first part is
about the significance of “better to go too soon than to stay too long.” The
sharp contrast was made b/w Justice Stewart and Sen. Javits.
In the second part,
the author implied Sen. Lugar was similar to Sen. Javits in that Lugar, he
argued, tried to stick to Senator position despite his old age – no evidence presented
that supported his falling illness with disease like ALS.
If the main point the author
wanted to make was that Sen. Lugar should spend the rest of his like with his offspring,
the blog is not worth it. It is none of the author’s business.
If the main point the
author wanted to make was Sen. Lugar fell ill with the worst diseases of
Washington, s/he should not cite the concession speech. If the one who defeated
Lugar had had potential to serve the interests of the US, not that of GOP,
Lugar’s concession speech must have been much different from the one the author
cited.
How could Lugar, a
person who has been working across the aisle, make a cheerful concession speech
for a Tea Partier who explicitly opposed bipartisan compromise? )
On June 19, 1981 a
vigorously healthy Justice Potter Stewart resigned from the Supreme Court at
the age of 66. “I've always been a firm believer in the principle that it’s
better to go too soon than to stay too long. Finally, and perhaps most
importantly, I wanted to have an opportunity to spend more time with my wife,
Andy, and hopefully, with our children and grandchildren while I was still
relatively young and healthy,” Stewart said.
Stewart died suddenly only four years later, at age 70, so he and his family
must have been especially grateful for those last years.
Stewart’s resignation
made news not only because it opened a vacancy on the Court, but as well
because it is so rare to see a man give up power with the certainty that there
are more important things in his life—family, to begin with. More typical was a
case I saw close up in the 1980s (as a staffer for Senator Daniel P. Moynihan
and then a State Department official in the Reagan administration), that of
Senator Jacob Javits of New York. At age 76 in 1980 and already suffering from
ALS, he would not retire. He insisted on running again, only to lose the
primary to Alphonse D’Amato, who became New York’s next senator. It seemed that
being a senator was all there was to Javits’s life. After his defeat he would
still not go home, if indeed he had a home any longer in New York. He prevailed
upon President Reagan and Secretary of State George P. Shultz to give him some
kind of advisory position at State, where I had occasion to brief the pathetic
figure: in a wheel chair, using oxygen tubes, awake and
asleep on and off from one minute the next. What an end to a long public
career.
I had all this in mind
watching Richard Lugar last night. He is 80, and was seeking yet another term
that would carry him to age 86 in the Senate. Were there no children or
grandchildren, I wondered, who deserved Lugar’s time as Potter Stewart’s
deserved his? Did Lugar not wonder if by age 86 he would be too old or sick to
serve, ending up like Javits? Was there no home to return to in Indiana? It
seems not, and that of course became a central issue in the campaign: Lugar's
only residence for years now has apparently been in Washington.
Lugar’s concession
speech was cold and aggressive: “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.”
====
====
(DO- moderate
republicans become endangered species. How will it affect the US policy on two Koreas?
Probably not a good sign. I appreciate his work across the aisle)
Probably not a good sign. I appreciate his work across the aisle)
Mourdock Defeats Lugar
in GOP Indiana Senate Primary
Tom Williams / Roll
Call / Getty Images , May 8, 2012 ,
Sen. Richard Lugar,
the third longest-serving member of the Senate, went down to a primary defeat
tonight to his Tea Party-backed opponent in the Republican primary.
State Treasurer
Richard Mourdock, backed by tea partiers and conservative campaign groups
outside the state, ousted Lugar in Indiana’s GOP primary, the Associated Press
projected.
Mourdock will face
Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly in November.
In Lugar, the Senate
would lose one of its few remaining members with a habit of bipartisanship. In Mourdock,
Lugar has been unseated by a mild-mannered, twice-elected statewide official who
wants to eliminate five federal departments and cut more spending than
House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., would.
“I hope that Richard
Mourdock prevails in November so that he can contribute to that Republican
majority in the Senate,” Lugar said in his concession speech. “We are experiencing deep political divisions
in our society right now. And these divisions have stalemated progress in
critical areas. But these divisions are
not insurmountable. I agree that people of good will, regardless of party, can
work together for the benefit of country.”
Mourdock began his acceptance
speech by leading a round of applause for Lugar.
“When I began this
campaign, Sen. Lugar was not my enemy. He is not now my enemy; he will never be
my enemy. He was, simply, over the last 15 months, my opponent,” Mourdock said.
“Hoosiers want to see Republicans inside the U.S. Senate take a more
conservative track.”
President Obama
lamented Lugar’s defeat in a statement released to press. “While Dick and I didn’t always agree
on everything, I found during my time in the Senate that he was often willing
to reach across the aisle and get things done. My administration’s efforts to
secure the world’s most dangerous weapons has been based on the work that
Senator Lugar began, as well as the bipartisan cooperation we forged during my
first overseas trip as Senator to Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan,” Obama said. A still photo of Lugar appeared in a 2008
Obama campaign ad, promoting Obama’s bipartisan work on nuclear
nonproliferation. Lugar suffered
criticism over the ad in his run against Mourdock.
Throughout the
campaign, Mourdock walked the line between attacking Lugar and showing him
deference as a long-serving statesman. In their lone televised debate, Mourdock
was reluctant to pounce on his opponent. “I can’t attack this grandfatherly
figure in Republican politics,” he later explained to ABC News in a phone
interview. Mourdock decided to run, he said, because members of the Indiana GOP
asked him to–a request that surprised Mourdock, given Lugar’s long tenure.
Lugar’s loss made
history. Among senators who had served at least six terms, only one had lost in
a primary before Lugar: Kenneth McKeller, D-Tenn., who joined the Senate in
1917 and lost to Democratic primary challenger Al Gore, Sr. in 1952. Only 22
senators in history served as long as Lugar has of 1,931 total, according to
the Senate historian.
Lugar currently ties
Utah’s Orrin Hatch as the Senate’s longest-tenured Republican. Hatch is also
facing a conservative primary challenge in 2012.
Mourdock’s win was
expected by political operatives in D.C. and Indiana after an expensive
campaign in which outside groups flocked to the Hoosier State. A total
of 12 groups spent $4.6 million, only one of them based in Indiana.
If raw spending had
decided the race, Lugar would have won. As of mid-April, Lugar had spent $6.7
million defending himself, to Mourdock’s $2 million. Outside groups spent more
heavily in favor of Mourdock.
Tea partiers and
conservative groups replayed their successful 2010 playbook to defeat Lugar,
the first establishment casualty of 2012. The anti-Lugar charge was led by
the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks, which routinely pick inexpensive states
and vulnerable Republican incumbents, attacking them for moderate votes. In
Indiana, that meant Lugar’s votes for TARP, against an earmarks moratorium, and
in favor of Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Even after the tea
party wave of 2010, Lugar failed to heed warnings of danger, according
to one Republican strategist.
“In the beginning of
2011, Sen. Lugar’s campaign was warned of what was coming at them, and
obviously other Republicans, Orrin Hatch and [Maine GOP Sen.] Olympia Snowe,
who had both hired top campaign staff, had heeded that warning and were
prepared,” the strategist said.
Lugar had his own
problems. He was briefly ruled
ineligible to vote in the county where he was registered, after
selling his home in the late 1970s and moving to Washington, D.C. He repaid the
Treasury after using taxpayer money for hotel stays during trips back to
Indiana. That saga allowed Lugar’s opponents to characterize him more
aggressively as casting moderate votes because he was “out of touch” with
Indiana.
“I think what you’re
seeing is a confluence of factors that are challenging for Sen. Lugar, and in
some ways what’s going on in Indiana is a microcosm of what’s going on
nationally in the Republican Party, with a few elements added in,” former
Indiana Democratic senator Evan Bayh told ABC News last week.
“Indiana is a
conservative state,” Bayh said. “I’m not surprised that some of these outside
groups would choose to get involved.”
Mourdock’s win
certainly signifies that the Republican Party has continued to grow more
conservative. Where Lugar voted with Democrats to advance the DREAM Act and
worked with the Obama administration to push the New START arms-reduction
treaty through the Senate, Mourdock is as conservative and ideological as
they come.
“Let’s do away with
the Department of Education, Energy, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development,”
Mourdock told ABC News in an April phone interview, and he has also has
proposed ending the IRS. Mourdock has suggested that Paul Ryan’s budget doesn’t
go far enough, and he released his own rough plan last year to shrink spending
by $7.6 trillion in 10 years (Ryan’s would reduce it by $5.5 trillion,
according to the Congressional Budget Office).
Perhaps most
significantly, Mourdock outspokenly opposes bipartisan compromise.
“Bipartisanship has brought us to the brink of bankruptcy,” he told ABC. “We
don’t need bipartisanship, we need application of principle.”
While some 2010
tea-party candidates showed a lack of campaign discipline and political skill,
Mourdock should prove more formidable. “For lack of a better comparison, he’s
not [failed Delaware Senate candidate] Christine O’Donnell, who just appeared
out of nowhere. He’s a two-time-elected statewide candidate, which means he’s
just more substantive,” Bayh told ABC.
But Democrats have
held back their opposition research on Mourdock in the hopes that he would win,
and on Wednesday, Indiana voters can expect the start of a barrage of
anti-Mourdock attacks by Democrats.
Mourdock’s win might
give Democrats a new chance to win Indiana’s Senate seat in November. Donnelly’s
campaign says its internal polling has shown him performing far better against
Mourdock than against Lugar. Majority PAC, the Democratic Senate-focused super
PAC, spent money to help Mourdock’s primary bid.
A GOP strategist
acknowledged that, with Mourdock’s win, Republicans would have to keep a closer
eye on the race. Though, with Indiana solidly red in recent statewide
elections, the party should feel good about its chances to keep Lugar’s seat
within the GOP ranks.
If Mourdock wins in
November, he’ll push the Senate’s GOP conference further to the right,
and he’ll join a growing cadre of tea-party senators who have clashed at times
with GOP leaders.
Asked in April how he
would handle pressure to fall in line, Mourdock recounted meeting
with conservative Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., before finalizing his decision to
run.
“He reached down, he’s
a tall guy, and put a hand on either shoulder, and said, ‘Richard, you get me
four or five more true conservatives, and we’ve just changed the leadership of
the United States Senate,’”Mourdock said. ”He said that doesn’t
necessarily mean we even change the people, but you get me four or five more
true conservatives, and we’ve just changed the way they’re gonna see things
because of our numbers.”
