May 9th, 2012
05:32 PM ET
11 years ago
Lugar's loss further polarizes U.S. Senate
Indianapolis, Indiana (CNN) - Richard Lugar's landslide loss in Tuesday's Indiana Republican primary isn't just a 36-year veteran getting tossed out of office before he wanted to go.
It's also the latest blow to the political center in an increasingly polarized Senate.
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Lugar was a dinosaur whose time had come and gone. 36 years in DC is far too much. The Democrat Party has been taken over by far left "progressives" that have no intention of compromising with anybody, which they proved with Obamacare and their trillion dollar stimulus fiasco. In November, reliable conservatives will be required to get this country back on track and out of the hands of leftist radicals.
What a big time mess the GOP has on its hands! And they deserve it.
The only hope for the senate to get anything done in the future is to limit the use of the filibuster in some manner. The US cannot survive when the upper house requires a 60-vote majority to pass anything of consequence. The GOP has invoked the filibuster against Obama more times in 4 years than the entire 90-year history of the rule COMBINED. That's not opposition; that's obstruction.
Please get rid off other old junk too. Obama needs broom to clean old junk and pass senate and congress term-limits. Period.
So, his opponent says that he doesn't see compromise happening in the Senate, and that his definition of bipartisanship is the Democrats agreeing to the Republican agenda. All I have to ask is where do you find these people??? Once again, our government isn't broken; it's the people that some of us vote for and send to Washington, D.C. to represent our interest that are broken. I am sure that all of the Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves right about now...
Republican filibusters have rendered the Senate useless. They simply follow the Party-line without thinking or listening to their own judgement. We need to flush these political weasels and replace them with statesmen (and stateswomen) willing and able to compromise for the good of the nation – not just their fat-cat sugar-daddies.
That is a problem to have the Senate further polarized because it slows everything down. We need people in the Senate who are willing to get things done and be flexible. This "my way or the highway" stuff is going to keep the Senate from doing the business of the country.
Many Democrats in the Senate are still open to compromise. The problem is the Republicans are unwilling to meet them half-way, for fear that it looks like they are supporting things President Obama would like to see. How about examining it this way. Given Lugar's replacement as Republican nominee, and given the anti-labor administration in the state, I would not be surprised to see that seat go to a Democrat this year. Add to that the folks in Massachusetts will oust the Democrat-lite Scott Brown. Olympia Snowe's seat could go to a Democrat as well, depending on who the Maine Republicans nominate. Should the Moderates prevail, the Republican Party could keep that seat. Should the Tea Party prevail, the Democrats have a good chance of capturing it.
However, given the number of Democrats retiring from the Senate, some of those seats could go GOP. Connecticut could be a tossup with Lieberman retiring (yeah, I will have to take a new tag line) depending on who gets the GOP nod. Chris Shays has been out of the state long enough that folks don't necessarily remember him. Also, he really isn't well known outside of lower Fairfield County. On the other hand Linda McMahon has been buying her way into respectability throughout the Rowland/Rell administration period. She spent on her failed campaign two years ago like a drunk sailor on shore leave, but that hasn't stopped her from pumping more into another ego run. On the Democrat side, Chris Murphy has practically been ordained by Governor Malloy, snubbing former State AG Beisiewicz, as the candidate of choice.
All in all, the Senate races look to be more exciting than the Presidential election.