Time Mag’s Scherer Hails ‘Incredibly Eloquent’ Lugar Manifesto, Compares It to Eisenhower’s Warning

By Brent Baker | May 11, 2012 | 09:23

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The Washington press corps always love it when establishment Republicans scold conservatives for trying to “purify” the party, and Time magazine’s Michael Scherer did not disappoint. “Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar did not go quietly, after losing his primary contest Tuesday in Indiana to a Tea Party-backed challenger, Richard Mourdock,” Scherer wrote the next day in a Time “Swampland” blog titled “The Importance of Dick Lugar’s Farewell Warning.”

“If there is one thing the American people need to read today,” the former writer for the far-left Mother Jones directed, “it is his farewell missive, which may prove to be as prescient and long lasting as Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 exit speech warning of the coming military industrial
complex.”

Thursday morning on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown, Scherer trumpeted Lugar’s words as “an incredibly eloquent manifesto,” asserting “there have been a number of people who’ve been chased out of the party now,” but none had the “courage” Lugar displayed.

MSNBC host Chuck Todd, NBC’s chief political correspondent, had rued the lack of attention to Lugar’s rebuke of his fellow Republicans.

From MSNBC’s 9 AM EDT The Daily Rundown on Thursday, May 10:

CHUCK TODD: The story that got over-shadowed by all of this, to me, that we would have been talking about – and I think if you’re the Republican Party you’re oddly happy, Michael Scherer, is the Dick Lugar manifesto that basically said he was chased out of his party.

MICHAEL SCHERER: Not only was it a manifesto, but it was an incredibly eloquent manifesto. There have been a number of people who’ve been chased out of the party now and none have either had the courage or the position-

TODD: They sort of wait until they leave office completely.

SCHERER: And it sounds like sour grapes. Here he was, like the way Lugar phrased that was as an appeal to the country saying, look, we’re electing positions now we’re not people and the long-term country is in trouble.

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Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Brent Baker on Twitter.

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Comments

I have never in my life read

Submitted by kareling on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 9:33am.

I have never in my life read anything that has "sore loser" stamped all over it like Lugar's "incredibly eloquent manifesto."

Should Romney win in November, I expect The One to be even less gracious.

Not...

Submitted by GeneralAl on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 9:56am.

"Should Romney win in November, I expect The One to be even less gracious"

Not should, when!

"Old Soldiers never die, they just fade away"!

LIberals measure partisanship

Submitted by rbosque on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 9:53am.

LIberals measure partisanship when Conservatives suck up to them, not the other way around. Piss on them, they should be fearful that Conservatives are pissed and not going to take any more of the business-as-usual from these dolts in Washington including RINOS.

"It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country"......Will Durant

Scherer just proved why

Submitted by ohio granny on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 9:56am.

Scherer just proved exactly why it is a good thing Lugar was defeated. The republican party does not need democrats masquerading as republicans. These RINO's should all be on notice. They can no longer lie about their true intentions and get away with it.

Call us the great unwashed masses or whatever derogatory term the libs want, we are purging the party of RINO's and will become the party of fiscal responsibility, small government and strong national defense.

All the caterwalling from democrats just proves the point that Lugar needed to go. There are others that need to pay close attention. Their time is coming. The survival of the USA as a strong, free country is at stake. We will not lose it without a fight.

Lugar Axehandle defeated???

Submitted by frank_andrini on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 9:59am.

Perhaps there is hope for my country after all.

Trust America not politicians

Lugar

Submitted by ferv888 on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 10:06am.

Lugar was chased by a 61/39 whooping, not by 2 or 3 points, if it was just purity, it would have been close, we were fed up with a guy who lives in the DC area, did not have a home here, and charged us for his hotel stays when he came back. People across the GOP spectrum were just fed up with him.

FERV888

In 09 it was becoming very

Submitted by jkwtrading on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 11:00am.

In 09 it was becoming very clear Lugar was going to be a goner, when die hard R's in Porter county (very conservative) wanted him gone.

the crescendo built upward from there, by 2011 even mentioning Lugar's name would get a fight brewing.

Wonder what have for October surprise?

Submitted by creekrat on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 10:12am.

Wondering why this is being used now? Gonna be a long, long year!

The Democrats and the Military Industrial Complex.

Submitted by drsamherman on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 10:26am.

I seem to recall that it was Democrats who held congress solidly until Reagan's presidency. It certainly was not Republicans.

Just a hunch, but I expect

Submitted by paulhafer on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 10:48am.

Just a hunch, but I expect that the farewell comments of the Honorable Zell Miller, former Georgia Governor and US Senator, in his reflections and warnings about where his Democratic party was going, chasing he and others out, were not viewed as “an incredibly eloquent manifesto” and treated with such respectful reverence and awe byTodd & Scherer

As our current President proves...

Submitted by c5then on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 11:22am.

Eloquence does not matter in the long run. What matters is actions and the knowledge of reality that lets you see things as they are and not as you wish them to be.

Speaking well about fiction and fantasy will not help turn the country around and put us back on course. For the most part it is the eloquent Marxists who have gotten us in the predicament that we are in. We could do with some less eloquent speakers and more understanding do-ers, ESPECIALLY in the Seante who have not passed a budget (which they are Constitutionally mandated to do) in over 3 years.

To Luger, I say good ridence. You have lived off the tax payers for far far too long while helping to steer the ship toward the reef, because you thought that the view was ncer. I am only saddended by the knowledge that you will now collect a pension that is better than 99% of your constituents whom you have put in harms way because of your compromises.

Madison and Jefferson and Franklin built a Republic - Roberts killed it!

I love the sound of RINO's whining in the morning

Submitted by Blonde on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 11:33am.

.....it smells like VICTORY! (to coin a phrase).

Lugar chose to move further to the left, even though his constituency is moving the opposite direction. Rather than choosing to become part of the solution, he chose to remain a cause of the problem, by going along with liberal policies in order to "get along".

To those who choose to get along, I have two words. Get Out! Now, while you still have your dignity....else you'll be whining in the morning after-election.

Handy Reference Guide to Obama's Gaffes and Goofs ~ Currently Numbering 200 (and Counting)

Any time a liberal starts on

Submitted by Kenny Bunkport on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 11:56am.

Any time a liberal starts on about lack of bi-partisanship, just remind them that Obamacare was jammed down Americans throats without a single Republican vote. Not only that, but Republicans were locked out of the writing of the bill as well. No Republican input, no Republican support. The Democrats didn't want any. (Even though they still had to heavily bribe six of their own to get it through). It doesn't get any more partisan than that. There isn't anything remotely similar on the Republican side in living memory.

A gun in your hand beats a cop on the phone.

Lugar was nothing more than a jackass in an elephant suit

Submitted by Dave. on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 12:11pm.

This man spent 36 years of his life willingly voting to help the communist left push this country to the very brink of its extinction.

Who cares what he thinks about anything?

Screw him.

-Dave

Vote for the American in November

A "Manifesto?"

Submitted by CobraMan on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 12:40pm.

Humm. Lugar writes a "manifesto," and Time Mag is "impressed" with how "eloquent" it was. Well, The Unibomber's Manifesto was also "eloquent" and dealt with things like the Military-Industrail complex. It was also far more recent than anything Eisenhower ever wrote about. So, one would think this it's far more relevant. But, alas, no reverences to THAT in the liberal Time Mag. No, they have to go decades back and reference a Republican and his "manifesto" written in the early 60's.

The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution

Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court

Or Anwar al-Awlaki.

Boo Hoo Dick Lugar,

Submitted by nolefan2 on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 1:26pm.

you abandoned the Republican party a long time ago. It just took a while for a good conservative to come along and put you to the curb. We can only hope that you will have a lot of company very soon.

Curious analogy, and farewell to the Lugarsaurus Rex

Submitted by Galvanic on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 1:27pm.

As he finished his second term, President Eisenhower warned the nation of a "military-industrial complex," and he was right.

But today we might more properly call it a "military-industrial-Congressional complex," of which Lugar was a longtime active member.

Such a complex does deliver security (some of the best in the world), but at an unnecessarily great expense, making it nearly impossible to make optimum investment decisions for our forces. It focuses on profits and home district jobs rather than results, and our men and women in uniform pay the price when it fails.

Beneath the surface of Lugar's sour-grapes "manifesto" is his warning that there exists a threat to the Ancien Regime in the Beltway, which will destroy the fossilized legislators and institutes that have driven up the national debt. This guy was so welded to Washington that he no longer had a residence in the state he represented, living in Virginia close to the culture that nourished him.

Indiana residents voted for change in their GOP primary and all this dinosaur can do is cry the blues and warn that the world will come to an end. He is angry because he has been fired from the job that he believed he was entitled to.

Well, goodbye, Mr. Lugar. No need to go back to Indiana anymore. Be a lobbyist for the complex.

Worst legacy that old Ike

Submitted by Kenny Bunkport on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 3:10pm.

Worst legacy that old Ike left. The communists have ran with that ball for 50 years. Instead of warning about the military-industrial complex, he should of warned us about the academic-media conspiracy.

Of course, if he had done that, his bit of prognostication would just be a forgotten line in a forgotten speech in his library somewhere. The academic-media conspiracists would have made sure of that.