According to the Media Village, it is supposed to be very poignant about Dick Lugar, the “Longest-serving Senate Republican in fight of his life“. In a report from home ground, Doghouse Riley explains for David “Possum” Brooks, why the withers of at least one of Lugar’s constituents remain unwrung:
… Fifty-some years in politics and Lugar absolutely freaked to be opposed by some nobody Teabagger. This tells you all you need to know. It certainly tells you more than Brooks’ column, excepting the unintentional revelations.
So that we in Indiana are now entering our third? seventeenth? month of Dick Lugar campaign ads which run something like this: I’m Dick Lugar, and I hate that black guy in the White House as much as you do! And I’ve been as dilatory and obstructionist about it as anyone! Pipeline!
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This is Dick Lugar, The Oldest Surviving Scam in the US Senate. And what’s more, it’s the real Dick Lugar, Dave. The “respected and thoughtful” Lugar is a canard, and the “independent” Lugar is a Fucking Lie. He moved to the Senate from being Nixon’s Favorite Mayor. That only qualifies one as a “moderate” by today’s whacked-out standards. He’s voted the party line for forty years. Absolutely reliably. One of his Obama-bashing ads–which is, come to think of it, the only kind he has, other than the one that bashes his Teabagger opponent for daring to question him–says he “Sponsored a Balanced Budget Amendment Seventeen Times.” Yeah, and voted for deficit spending thirty-five times.
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Dave, if it gives you a sad to see Dick Lugar, Octogenarian Wingnut Fellator, you either haven’t been paying attention, or you’ve lost whatever ability to tell reality from fantasy you began with…
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Really, all this time as a “principled” “conservative” who winked at the rabid racists of the base at election time, secure in the knowledge that you weren’t actually one of them, all those Burke weekends dreaming up snappier slogans to get the rabble to Vote Aristo, and now you’re beginning to realize that actions have consequences? And now you wanna know why your brand of well-born party official didn’t take on Rush Limbaugh earlier? The way you did: the measured snark that none of his listeners would ever hear, or get if they did? They at least have jobs to lose; you’ve got a sinecure. When did you speak honestly and openly about the culture wars (oh, you’re sort of for gay marriage and reproductive rights, provided the wind blows your cloudy pronouncements just right), let alone speak sense about global climate change, energy policy, banking reform, campaign reform, or any of the other crackpot schemes you “reasonable Republicans” need to keep the spigot turned on? Fer chrissakes, you don’t like the Rabid Right, now that it may cost you an election? You gotta set the Wayback Machine for a lot earlier than five years ago to kill it in its cradle.
Speaking of unintentional self-disclosure, I’m thinking about using “David ‘Possum’ Brooks” on a regular basis, because if there’s anyone who fits the description “tremble for a few seconds then slip into an involuntary coma every time they’re challenged aggressively from the right”, it would be DougJ’s least-favorite NYTimes columnist.
BGinCHI
Might tweak to David “fat possum” Brooks, but otherwise go ahead.
/the mgmt
Linda Featheringill
Somebody doesn’t care for Lugar.
jurassicpork
The screaming, sweat-drenched life of the late Andrew Breitbart should’ve served as an object lesson to what happens when lunatics such as him are listened to without even a modicum of vetting. But it’s a lesson we Americans will never learn.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I have been wanting to complain about this so here goes. I posted that article on FB last night about the Montana federal judge’s email joke. I heard from an acquaintance from college for the first time in about a year (the last time I got into a argument with him). His response was,
‘He is more communist pink than white or black. Thats the color I have a problem with.” Why I bother arguing with him I do not know.
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
The vile creature is pissed because he’s too old to understand or adapt to how the rules have changed.
There’s some old saying about “live by the sword, die by the sword” that might be appropriate.
Hope he loses to a real-life actual brownshirted Nazi. That would be some justice, right there.
Tom Levenson
Hey! He’s my least favorite NYT columnist too. Except for Chunky Bobo, who doesn’t count, because he’s still not allowed out after dark without his baby sitter. And his diapers.
gex
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Can you give him a dictionary that defines socialism and then ask him how giving money to private enterprise counts as socialism in any way?
Of course not. If these types were interested in knowing things, they might not be that opposed to Obama.
gex
Blast. Moderation for a extraneous reference to a political system wrapped around an ED med.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@BGinCHI: I was gonna suggest PoPo BoBo, but I like just Fat Possum better.
ornery_curmudgeon
“tremble for a few seconds then slip into an involuntary coma every time they’re challenged aggressively from the right” LOL whatever
David Brooks WORKS FOR the funders of the RIGHT. All the Right is is image. Wealth owns the media through special sheepskins I mean corporations.
I realize you cannot see this, Dj, it is like the Buffy spell where you are shown the truth, you know it for a half-second, and immediately forget it and start babbling like a moronic tape machine on repeat about horse-races and cowardly trembling and out-of-touchness etc etc etc.
Consider the media’s behavior re: Iran before the Buffy spell comes and takes your dang mind again.
peach flavored shampoo
I missed the article/meme that called Lugar a moderate. Really, this happened? Anyone got a link?
Steve
I believe Lugar has done some moderate and genuinely statesmanlike stuff on foreign policy. Whether that qualifies him as a “moderate” in the context of his overall body of work is a matter of opinion, I guess. I don’t question that he’s said and done plenty of wingnutty things over the years just like all the rest.
What bothers me (maybe it “concerns” me), and I say this as a partisan Democrat, is that there is this almost virulent opposition to acknowledging that there are any moderate Republicans at all or a Republican could ever take a moderate position on anything. If you try to argue that Scott Brown is a moderate, you will instantly be met with dozens of heated responses along the lines of “he’s not a moderate, he once said X!” or “he voted for Y!” And that’s it, no attempt to assess his entire body of work or anything, as long as he has even a single wingnutty blemish on his record there’s nothing to even discuss.
(We do the same thing with Democrats too, only it’s more like “He once voted against [insert progressive agenda item here]! Fuck him!” Even Russ Feingold failed this purity test. And what we do to Republicans is just the other side of the coin.
4jkb4ia
Blunt Amendment Update
Yes: Snowe.
No: Casey(!!), Manchin, Nelson (NE).
Everything not recorded yet.
“Yes” is the side with most of the Democrats for some reason.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@4jkb4ia: I think that’s the motion to table it. Not surprised at Manchin or Nelson, a little bit surprised Casey wants to pick this fight, but he’s a professional Red Beanie-ist
Punchy
Can we call Indianaites, subject to the voting proclivities of Lugar, as “loogies”?
I’d sell that idea, but where does one go to hock a loogie?
gex
@Steve: Well, we have to be really careful in doing so. They have deliberately moved the far right position on all issues such that “moderate” is simply kinda far right. Helping them by calling that moderate isn’t helpful to anyone, least of all our politics.
Ben Franklin
Wading through the latest Wikileaks on the Strafor matter and found this little nugget.
http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/387684_-windows-1252-b.html
An Al Jazeera English video report explained the Icelandic Modern Media
Initiative in March.
Steve
@4jkb4ia: I’m not watching, but maybe it is a motion to table the amendment, where “yes” means a vote to kill it.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@peach flavored shampoo:
Lugar has long been the GOP go-to guy on nuclear proliferation policy issues. He worked closely with Obama on these issues during the first couple of years that BO was in the Senate.
Cain
When I was in elementary school, I write dick lugar for something. It was for a class project. Anyways he wrote a nice letter back. I like lugar and I do believe he is fairly moderate. He is certainly is no fire breather. That said he should act so crazy, people should accept, why demean yourself for these assholes? Some people just don’t want to retire.
scav
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Its really so sad to think there are people with so little personal success in their lives that they’ve never been able to go to socia1ist-commie hellholes like Paris.
Martin
@4jkb4ia: It’s a motion to table. The GOP is trying to avoid voting on it, the Dems are trying to force an uprdown vote.
This is designed to be an exercise in “If you don’t want to be embarrassed in our campaign ads because you voted for your bill, then don’t fucking write the bill in order to campaign on it in the first place.”
Elizabelle
@Steve:
Your comment 11. Thank you.
I get tired of people not getting credit for being reasonable and for working across the aisles, even if it’s just from time to time.
Lugar is a sensible Republican statesman, even, whose party has gone clinically insane.
He’d be a great ambassador or official with a lot of credibility, were Obama to ask him to serve.
MattR
@Martin: Motion to table has passed.
Professor
O/T The Senate just killed Blunt’s amendment on contraception.
Dracula
OT, but any update on how fakey fake fake phoney Obummer’s BC is according to Sherrif Jerkoff? Anyone know the time of that presser?
Steve
@Martin: I think that might be backwards, or maybe I’m confused. The Dems are the ones voting to table it, meaning set it aside without further debate, right?
Mark S.
Every time I click the comments to a post it switches me to what I assume is the mobile version. If I leave a comment it goes back to normal. Is anyone else having this problem?
Martin
@MattR: Oh well. So much for that fun.
4jkb4ia
I had the thought that it benefits Romney not to be completely aware of what is going on in Congress because Congress is so unpopular–he does not want to lose people he might otherwise get because they are fed up with the Republican incompetence in Congress.
Tabled–51-48. I knew it wouldn’t pass. Another wingnut sideshow for now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Liberal, moderate, conservative is all in the eye of the beholder. I think a better way to frame the discussion is partisanship. Lugar used to be an independent, reasonable voice on foreign policy, just as Snowe used to be on domestic issues, and way back before the Clenis, Orrin Hatch voted with Dems on education and health care issues. Since the Clenis and/or Bush v Gore or 9/11, all three have become increasingly hard core partisans.
Blunt amendment tabled, 51-48.
Ben Franklin
@jurassicpork:
holy crap! I thought only the good die young.
Martin
@Steve:
Actually, if the Dems were confident they could defeat it (which they should have been since Harry brought it to the floor in the first place) then they should have been voting to NOT table it, in order to cast proper votes. Tabling it kills it without voting on it. The Dems were threatening to force a proper vote and force all of the GOP to go on the record over contraception coverage.
4jkb4ia
Another pro-Lugar comment. Lugar was willing to support Dawn Johnsen which is a lot of street cred in my book, and was willing to speak out for New START.
Lugar strikes me as knowing his own mind and not being afraid to use it. Whereas I am stuck with Roy Blunt who seems to be a perfectly nice, smart guy in real life but is willing to subdue these qualities to carry the partisan banner. Not to mention that he couldn’t get into leadership in the House because he was too associated with the corruption and closeness to lobbyists of the DeLay era.
I am disgusted with Roy Blunt over this, BTW. Feel free to translate this into ABL-type language.
BenA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think you can really tie it to Rove/Cheney.. the lock step party voting that is… and then the GOP takes an even harder right turn with the rise of the Tea Party and the election of Obama… They vote lock step now almost by reflex… no matter how right wing the idea is.
Steve
@Martin: Maybe they should have, but I think it’s generally considered fair game to treat motions to table as a vote on the merits. Almost every D voted to table and almost every R voted the other way, so it’s hard to see how this wasn’t a proxy vote on the merits – this just means that now we don’t have to waste a day in the Senate having a debate over this trash.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Professor:
They didn’t kill it. They prevented it from being fertilized and implanted.
KG
@Cain: honestly, I don’t blame politicians for not wanting to retire… As a Senator, you’re basically in the most exclusive club in the world, and you get a say in pretty much everything that happens. You can outlast presidents (you serve two terms and you win), you can outlast Supreme Court justices (plenty have), which means you can have a huge impact on what happens. If you believe you’re doing good, it’d be hard to even consider letting it go willingly. And if you don’t care about doing good, just acquiring power/prestige/notoriety it’d be damn near impossible.
amk
@Elizabelle: sorry, dick luger has marched lock-step with his crazy party in all the votes since 2008. He has been as disappointing as the maine sisters since the black man took office. Fuck’em all. They brought their to party to this precipice that we are now seeing.
Steve
@amk: Republicans voted 32-9 against the S-CHIP expansion during Obama’s first year in office. Do you happen to know offhand which side of that vote Lugar was on?
Mino
@Ben Franklin: How timely. Al Jazeera had an article on the closing of library.nu and similar sites by SOPA clones.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012227143813304790.html
Good on them.
srv
So, Bobo, what’s your excuse – or is this an admission that you’ve always been a Faux-Moderate?
amk
@Steve: From your post, I am guessing he voted for it ? So ?
What’s his overall record ?
Ben Franklin
@Mino:
I like this…………
Steve
@amk: So you’re uninformed, including but not limited to your understanding of the word “lock-step.” You are exactly the type of person I was talking about in my comment #12 – exactly. It makes it very difficult to have any kind of conversation because you literally can’t say one good word about a Republican without people like you jumping all over it with a rant about how all wingnuts are the same.
Gex
I’m just sayin’. You don’t call Dick Cheney a moderate just because he’s moderate on SSM. The occasional moderate vote doesn’t make a legislator a moderate.
Frankensteinbeck
Of course Bobo has a Sad these days. The Reagan Revolution is dying. Reagan sold the US a set of narratives and excuses and friendly smiles to cover for the GOP’s actual policies – gutting the safety net, giving the rich anything they want, and making Evangelical Christianity the law of the land, mainly. For thirty years the GOP has used this mask to push policies most people don’t want. That’s all over. The Tea Party has stomped on that mask so hard, it may never be fixed, and now they’re showing the US what the GOP’s real priorities are.
The pleasant lies covering corruption, extremism, and assholery have defined the Republican moderate. Yes, for David ‘Rich People Are Better Than You’ Brooks, the death of those lies is a terrible tragedy.
amk
@Steve: In short, you got nothing ? You may continue to say
good word about a republicankiss his ass.Origuy
@Dracula:
3pm EST. Dr. Conspiracy’s site has a link to the live streaming. (NB: Dr. Conspiracy is anti-birther.)
catclub
@Mark S.: I bet that is what I was seeing. Knocking the initial “www.” out of the URL fixed it for me. Then after a few times doing that, I did not have to do it any more. It Might have involved updating cookies.
Remember when there were problems until you posted and then they went away? It might be similar to that.
Origuy
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Do you have a place to store the internet you just won?
Schlemizel
@BenA:
you are too nice. The slimy salamander really turned it up to 11 in 1992 in order to win in 94. It had been getting bad before that but that was the real break from decency to insanity.
Schlemizel
@Steve:
So the giant Dick, Cheney is ok on gay rights (now that his butch daughter is out) does that give him a pass? If not where do YOU draw the line for good asshole/bad asshole?