Indiana Republican Richard Lugar has served in the Senate for almost thirty-six years; he started before the first Star Wars movie released. But after a long string of unopposed victories his time is finally coming to an end, as he lost his party’s primary on Tuesday to the more conservative Richard Mourdock.
Mourdock is pro-government enough to disappoint libertarians, but he wants to abolish several federal departments and was backed by the Tea Party. He tried to paint Lugar as an out-of-touch liberal, noting, for example, that Lugar voted to raise the debt ceiling fifteen times.
In a way, this was unfair to Lugar, because raising the debt ceiling was one of those things that pretty much everybody in Congress has done for decades; there’s nothing especially “liberal” about it. But in a way, that’s also the point – Lugar was deeply embedded in the “status quo” that got us where we are today. (Don’t get me started on his lobbying connections.) Apparently this Washington insider thought he could represent the state for the rest of his life when he didn’t even own a home in Indiana anymore.
Now the media wasted no time lamenting Lugar’s loss and bemoaning how terribly extreme the Republican party is becoming. NPR said he was a “legend undone by his greatest strength” and that he lost because “his friendship with Obama… in the cauldron of hyperpartisanship, was most vividly turned against him by his own party.” CNN said Republican voters were “punishing him for the qualities he considered assets: seniority, expertise in foreign policy and a penchant for bipartisan cooperation.” And those weren’t even the opinion pieces. Ezra Klein said Lugar’s loss shows how much Republicans are to blame for polarization in Congress.
Continue reading The Fuzzy Line Between Moderate and Establishment