Losing an election can often show the true side of a person.
As a matter of public record, both a losing and a winning candidate will issue a formal statement in print and then make informal speeches to their supporters on election night.
We've all see it many times.
Some of us have even made those speeches.
On Tuesday night Dick Lugar of Indiana lost to Richard Murdock and did something unheard-of in political circles.
He issued two statements.
The first one was worthy of a statesman who has served well since 1976's election of Jimmy Carter. The words were written by a man who personally knew and worked with Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama. They were kind thoughtful and helpful for the future.
The second statement was destructive and corrosive. It is an extraordinary look into the mind of a politician who should well have been dismissed years ago for his arrogant attitude based on these departing destructive words, if nothing else.
In the second statement he wrote:
"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."
Revise his stated goal? His stated goal won the election... the voters supported his stated goal.
And Dick Lugar lost because the people rejected his goals.
So who was the real Dick Lugar, after all?
Apparently the real one was the man who lost and left the last word for us to clearly view the image behind the splintered shards of plastic diplomacy. We peer into the visage of an angry man who had not known loss, until he himself was rejected by the voters.
The nation does not need Dick Lugar, not any other single individual. We are a republic form of government - one that continues on, regardless of the loss or death of any elected official. His career as a public servant will soon be forgotten, as it should be. Each servant should serve and then leave office.
Lugar leaves with a gun to his own head; captive and kidnapped by a self-centered way of thinking, his niceness stripped away for all to view by his same hands.
And the republic rolls on.
Richard who? Oh that's right Richard Mourdock, the nominee of the GOP in Indiana.
Didn't he beat an incumbent?
Den
So, Den, have you been happy with the voting records of Sen. O'Donnell from Delaware, Sen. Miller from Alaska, and Sen. Angle from Nevada? Oh, right, they were candidates the TEA Party nominated who lost races the Republican Party would have easily won had they nominated a reasonable candidate. (In Alaska, in fact, Miller lost to a write-in reasonable Republican.)
Posted by: Bubblehead | May 10, 2012 at 01:35 AM