Primary Election Sadness

I am nearly heartbroken over Sen Richard Lugar's Senate seat loss in the Indiana Republican primary yesterday. With that vote, the US has lost one of the last public servants who put what he thought was the good of the nation above partisan squabbles and sound bite platitudes. At every level of government in which he served he did so with integrity and honor. It isn't too much to say that we would be facing a far different world without his efforts in the foreign policy realm - in particular the removal of tons of nuclear weapons material from the potential terrorist market through his work with Sen. Sam Nunn.

One of my earliest political memories is being woken up by my parents when I was 8 to be told that Lugar had won the Indianapolis mayoral election. I have always looked to him as an example of the best that a moderate Republican could offer. His defeat is proof that such a thing is now a complete oxymoron, to be replaced with more of the "our best work as politicians is to cause failure so we can be elected and face an opposition which will work constantly for our own failure" school of governance.

Add that to the passage of Amendment 1 in North Carolina and it has been a particularly crappy day.