Richard Lugar

Though Steve Benen, who's also the primary blogger for the MSNBC program's website, is a true-blue liberal, he thinks highly of the foreign-policy chops of some recent Republicans. In a Thursday post, Benen wrote that GOPers such as Richard Lugar and Brent Scowcroft were “learned” and “approached international affairs with [a] degree of maturity.” That was then; this is now. Benen touched on,…

Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) on Sunday gave CNN's Candy Crowley a much-needed education on what "moderate" and "willing to work with the other side" mean in Washington today. Appearing on State of the Union, Santorum correctly informed his host that the kind of Republican she wants in office "means doing what the other side wants only doing it slower instead of doing what is necessary…

In the wake of Richard Mourdock's landslide victory over Republican Senator Richard Lugar in Indiana's primary Tuesday, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift made what some might consider a staggeringly stupid prediction on Friday's McLaughlin Group. "The Tea Party will cost the Republicans control of the Senate" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

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 “…

Joining the rest of the media in mourning the primary defeat of Republican Indiana Senator Richard Lugar on Tuesday, on Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams praised the "old-school moderate" who "was attacked for working to compromise with the White House" and lamented: "His defeat comes close to ending the era of centrist Republicans in the Senate."

New York Times reporter Monica Davey was in Indianapolis to cover the Tea Party toppling of the moderate, establishment Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana: "G.O.P. Voters Topple Lugar After 6 Terms." Davey barely concealed her regretful tone: Richard G. Lugar, one of the Senate’s longest-serving members, a collegial moderate who personified a gentler political era, was turned out of…

ABC’s Good Morning America treated last night’s loss of long-time serving Republican Senator Richard Lugar, to the more conservative Tea Party favorite Richard Mourdock, as a sad sign of the end of bi-partisanship. In the 7am half-hour of Wednesday’s show, ABC’s Josh Elliott declared Lugar’s loss was an “earthquake of great degree” and eulogized Lugar as a senator who was “well-known for his…

(Note to commenters: This post is the first one on NB which uses Disqus for commenting purposes.) While liberals have been waxing rapsodic about Greece and France voting for wasteful socialism, conservatives last night have two victories to be crowing about in Wisconsin and Indiana. In Wisconsin, government reformer Scott Walker received more votes in the GOP primary than his Democratic…

The New York Times’s biased Tea Party reporter Kate Zernike profiled Indiana’s veteran moderate Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, one of the Times’s favorite Republicans, on Sunday’s front page: "Running on Moderation in Immoderate Times." With Sen. John McCain making conservative noises on illegal immigration, Lugar may be the best bet for the Times to foster its dream of a moderate (i.e.…

If you look at the description of yesterday afternoon's U.S. Senate Roll Call Vote Number 278 ("A bill to amend title 28, United States Code, to clarify and improve certain provisions relating to the removal of litigation against Federal officers or agencies to Federal courts, and for other purposes."), you'd never know it had anything to do with illegal immigration. But it did. It was a…