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No longer feeling sorry for Dick Lugar

No longer feeling sorry for Dick Lugar

I’ve been traveling without a computer this weekend but this story at IndyStar is worth a PDA post, so excuse some formatting issues like no embedded links.

The inclination I’ve had to feel sorry for Dick Lugar that his career may reach an inglorious end is rapidly dissipating. Lugar demonstrates daily why it is time to defeat him.

Lugar still refuses to say he will support Mourdock, still seeks to have non-Republicans decide the Republican primary, and feeds the left-wing narrative that the Tea Party just shouts.

Lugar is insulting and arrogant.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20120506/LOCAL/205060342/Behind-Closed-Doors-little-too-close-comfort:

Endorsement? Maybe not.

Sen. Richard Lugar is refusing to commit to endorsing his challenger, Treasurer Richard Mourdock, if Mourdock wins Tuesday’s primary election. Lugar, who is seeking a seventh term in the Senate, said he wasn’t going to contemplate. that any such endorsement would be needed. “I’m not going to discuss not winning on Tuesday,” Lugar said. “I’m going to win on Tuesday, and that’s my answer.”

But it would be hard for Lugar to put much sincerity into an endorsement, given that he’s called Mourdock unqualified to be effective in the Senate. Lugar, who has been attacked for having what he calls “the temerity actually to talk to Democrats,” said Mourdock has a “my way or the highway” attitude. “Anyone coming in to the Congress as a new senator with that point of view will be totally ineffective,” Lugar said. “You may have a great deal of satisfaction, shouting, carrying on, doing whatever you’re doing, but in terms of representation of this state or the moving of any policy with regard to this country, your effect will be zero.”

Voters, he said, “ought to understand that.” Mourdock’s campaign is using that refusal, along with Lugar’s appeal to independents and Democrats who back him, as just one more reason why Republicans should back him. “Dick Lugar’s voting record is worrisome enough, but now his outright solicitation of Democrats to support him in a Republican primary and his continued attacks on Treasurer Mourdock’s character suggests that he is unwilling to unconditionally support the Republican ticket in November,” said Mourdock spokesman Chris Conner. “Senator Lugar’s liberal voting record makes him look like a Democrat, and now his wordsware confirming it.

Lugar doesn’t get it.  He’s not being challenged because he spoke to Democrats. He’s being challenged because he has been co-opted by power.

Good riddance.

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Comments

Reticulator | May 6, 2012 at 5:30 pm

Peggy Noonan says we need seasoned statesmen in the Senate. This is probably an example of seasoned statesman behavior.

[…] LEGAL INSURRECTION: No longer feeling sorry for Dick Lugar. […]

“we need seasoned statesmen in the Senate…”
Seasoned and done. If he were a pooch, Obama would have sunk his teeth in him already.

Ragspierre | May 6, 2012 at 5:50 pm

I’ll risk being repetitive…

TERM LIMITS. NOW!!!

Absolutely corrupted.

“Good riddance”

AMEN, Professor Jacobson.

Yet another indication that the GOP “elites” have utterly lost touch with the base of the party. All of them must go…every damn one. Turn out the rascals and vote against all incumbents.

They are the fount of our current troubles becaus they have done nothing to stem them. The current GOP leadership has “gone along to get a long” for so long, that they are part and parcel of the problems that we are facing.

Instead of make those tough decisions that will help turn things around, they, for nearly 50 years, punted on tough choices. We’ve just about run out of other people’s money and with the failure of the Senate to pas any sort of a budget, automatic cuts will occur in the next few months.

Tar and Feathers aren’t good enough…

Rich Vail
Pikesville, MD
http://thevailspot.blogspot.com

[…] Dick Lugar. Yes, it’s far beyond that point: Lugar still refuses to say he will support Mourdock, still […]

It is possible to view with sadness the ignominious end of a career of a man who has on balance been a steady conservative influence in the Senate without feeling any sympathy for the man himself.

Lugar has clearly written the script for his own demise over the years as he succumbed to that virulent contagion of the Senate, Insidious Self-Importance, which leads its victims to suppose they are indispensable and in fact more important than the office they hold or the people and state they represent.

gobsmacker | May 6, 2012 at 6:45 pm

Does Senator Lugar know the difference between talking to Democrats and surrendering to them? What Conservatives want and need are Republican office holders who are committed to defend conservative values, not compromise them. The Democrats in office have repeatedly shown they will not keep their promises. They do not negotiate in good faith. The only policies they are wiling to move forward are liberal policies, which are worth less than zero to Conservatives. If Lugar no longer has the wherewithal to fight for the values conservatives will send him to Congress to represent and to protect, then it’s time for him to leave the Old Boys Club and retire. Politics is no sport for a tired old man who’s lost the will to compete.

persecutor | May 6, 2012 at 6:46 pm

Stick a fork in him; he’s done.

The Senator is no longer either a democrat or of the other party. He’s simply a member of the Club, who’s accrued a bunch of points due to seniority. Is this what we want in the senate? Well, so lugar wishes, and it looks like it’s what we have, until we all decide that it shouldn’t be so.

I meant THIS. Sorry. I aint Mr.HTML.

I grew up in Indianapolis when Lugar was the mayor. He lived in what was then the posh neighborhood of Avalon Hills. Though I did not know him personally, friends did, and he was/is nothing more than an opportunistic politician that should have been a long ago faded memory.

Let’s hope Indiana turns Luger into a lugee.

Political hacks need to be spit out, not swallowed.

[…] Jacobson has lost the love for Dick Lugar. I’ve been traveling without a computer this weekend but this story at IndyStar is worth a PDA […]

BannedbytheGuardian | May 6, 2012 at 10:40 pm

Can he take the other triple decade ex Senator Biden away with him to the farm?

It is getting embarrassing.

RINOs need to be voted out at all costs. They are a cancer destroying Conservatism — and the nation.

Reticulator | May 6, 2012 at 11:23 pm

Lugar isn’t being too bright. If Republican voters didn’t want someone who has “the temerity actually to talk to Democrats” would they be voting for someone who promises to “confront and convert” them?

Lugar sounds just FORMER Sen. Arlen Spector just before he was voted out of office.