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NASHVILLE, Ind. — So, there are some Republicans on the fringe who are talking about taking on Sen. Dick Lugar in 2012. This would be akin to a Democrat challenging Sen. Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts back in the day. Or Robert Byrd in West Virginia.
There are a handful of politicians who in the mid to late span of their careers achieve what we call “statesman” status. Doc Bowen and Lee Hamilton were examples of this here in Indiana. A statesman establishes a political cred to the point where he stands above normal political activity. When Lugar won his sixth term in 2006, he was unopposed by the Democrats — something that rarely happens above the Mason-Dixon line. “Let’s be honest,” said Indiana Democratic Chairman Dan Parker in 2006. “Richard Lugar is beloved not only by Republicans, but by Independents and Democrats.”
A statesman achieves such status not simply by winning elections with landslide margins, but by achievement. In the case of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, an Indiana senator achieved at the head-of-state level. For the first time in history of mankind, an arch rival is scrapping the arsenal — in this case nuclear, chemical and biological weapons — of another. The WMD of the Soviet Union was the most sinister in humanity.
And this work is not done.
Just last month, the Nunn-Lugar Act was responsible for six strategic nuclear warheads deactivated, two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) destroyed, six ICBM mobile launchers destroyed, four nuclear weapons transport train shipments secured, and 48 metric tons of Russian chemical weapons agent neutralized.
The WMD stockpiles have been eliminated from countries like Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Albania.
There remain cesspools of other odious threats that if delivered into the hands of terrorists could wipe out a city or a stadium, something Lugar articulated back in 1995. The fact that this hasn’t happened yet may be because of the work of Sen. Lugar. And on this count alone — along with his work on hunger or keeping democracy viable after corrupt Philippine elections 30 years ago — a seventh term for Sen. Lugar, even at age 78, makes sense.
Particularly to someone like me, who traveled with Lugar to five countries and as far out as Siberia three years ago. Despite having 25 years on me, the guy was indefatigable. I was exhausted by the 4 a.m. wake-up calls, 19-hour days and late dinners. The day after Lugar returned, he was presiding over Foreign Relations Committee meetings with top generals flying in from Iraq.
The Republican ankle biters from the right were indignant when Lugar announced he would vote to confirm Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. They were also upset that he voted for Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
State Sen. Mike Delph, who may be looking to challenge Lugar in the 2012 primary, chided “Sen. O’bama” (sic) on his support of Kagan. “Some have suggested that Senator Lugar’s support of Elena Kagan is an act of statesmanship,” Delph wrote on Facebook. “And that those of us expressing concern are partisan and lack an understanding of Separation of Powers and harbor sour grapes being on the losing side of a Presidential election. If that is true, then why didn’t the media criticize Sen. Bayh or then Sen. O’Bama for voting against Chief Justice John Roberts or Associate Justice Alito?”
Delph told the Indianapolis Star, “Elena Kagan, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, are all very liberal. None of these individuals is worthy of Hoosier support as they are all out of step with Main Street Indiana. He needs to be mindful of how people in Indiana view these nominees.”
Lugar pointed to his Sept. 12, 2005, statement during the Roberts confirmation: “The Founders were at pains to emphasize the difference between the political branches — the Executive and the Legislature — and the Judiciary. Their concern about the potential dangers of passionate, interest-driven political divisions, which Madison famously called the ‘mischiefs of faction,’ influenced their design of our entire governmental structure. But they were especially concerned that such mischiefs not permeate those who would sit on the bench. Otherwise, they warned, ‘the pestilential breath of faction may poison the fountains of justice,’ and ‘would stifle the voice both of law and of equity.’
“I believe that each of us in the Senate bears a special responsibility to prevent that from occurring,” Lugar said.
As Lugar dusted off that statement, WIBC conservative talk radio show host Greg Garrison was blasting him for having the audacity to vote for Kagan, whom he sophomorically described as a “communist.”
So Lugar might well be confronted with the “mischiefs” of politics in 2012.
Some on the right call him a “RINO” — Republican In Name Only. This comes in a year after which Lugar opposed President Obama’s stimulus package, the health reforms, the Wall Street bailout, and was skeptical of the handling of the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies. This has brought disappointment from the center and left who hoped Lugar would be the GOP bridge to Obama.
Lugar has — as a true internationalist — backed Obama’s efforts in reaching out to Islam, particularly after the President’s 2009 Cairo speech, and the START Treaty. The START treaty was a major whipping boy in the recent Republican Senate primary as the field tripped over themselves to appeal to the other wing of traditional Hoosier politics — isolationist right — as opposed to internationalists like Lugar, Hamilton and Ambassador Tim Roemer.
Spencer Ackerman observed, “Lugar’s brand of moderate internationalism is a dying one in an increasingly bellicose Senate GOP caucus. Take a look at the 2003 vote on the last nuclear reduction treaty with Moscow. Enough GOPers who voted for it are still in the Senate to provide for ratification — John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (R-Maine), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Pat Roberts (R-Kans.), I could go on — but Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), now the Senate GOP leader, didn’t even vote on a Bush administration priority. And enough of the newer, smaller class of GOP senators are either further to the right or disinterested in bipartisan foreign policy when cobbled together by a Democratic president as to raise questions about to who goes along with Lugar’s exhortations.”
He added, “Lugar’s backing will get the treaty out of the Foreign Relations Committee, something that was hardly certain as recently as last month. The administration also has the lever of Ronald Reagan’s fulsome quotes about seeking a nuke-free world to use against recalcitrant GOP senators. 'My central arms control objective has been to reduce substantially, and ultimately to eliminate, nuclear weapons and rid the world of the nuclear threat' (Reagan, 1988) is just one example among many."
“If not,” Ackerman continues, “it won’t just be an indictment of the Obama administration’s legislative acumen. It’ll be a statement about the collapse of what used to be a bipartisan international priority, most fervently advocated by the most sainted GOP president of all.”
Can Lugar be defeated in the Republican primary?
This would be a fool’s errand or a narcissistic plot to gin up statewide name ID for a future run.
Any challenger would come up against the Lugar political machine that pioneered voter lists, and an incumbent with a 60 to 70 percent approval. The Lugar apparatus has so many legions of loyal allies — Gov. Mitch Daniels the most influential — that any challenge would have to be viewed as almost comical.
One challenge from the right would virtually guarantee another, and the two or three will hack at each other for that 25 percent (perhaps much less) of the John Price/Eric Miller wing of the party.
Thus is life in the factions of mischief.
The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com
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