Richard Lugar for Senate

In just a few short hours, I will be walking over to the third different polling place to which we have been assigned since we moved from our apartment in Southport to our house in Irvington. The election volunteer at the polling place will check my identification, per the discriminatory state law, and then ask whether I would like a ballot with the names of Republicans or Democrats on it. If I really had my druthers, I’d get a ballot with the names of liberals on it; but this is a stupid state filled with stupid people, and you’d have better luck getting an abortion performed on Easter by a lesbian Catholic priest than you would of finding enough Indiana liberals, in the same place at the same time, to get a game of euchre.

Ordinarily, I would ask for the Democrat ballot and then go about my business. Though I have made a handful of exceptions since becoming an informed person, I don’t vote for Republicans. There are roughly a gajillion reasons for this (an example of which would be that I am not in the Ku Klux Klan); and even when I make that rare exception and vote for a Republican, that person almost always winds up disappointing me. The only exception to this annoying wave of disappointment is Senator Richard Lugar, himself a rare politician who seems genuinely to be more concerned with getting things done and working and playing well with others than about fiery party rhetoric and saying “no” for the sake of saying “no.”

In a post-Tea Party world, however, such a standard operating procedure is not doing Senator Lugar any favors. The ultra-right-wing of the Republican party (motto: Redefining Batshit Fucking Crazy for the Internet Age! #homophobicracistoldwhitemen) has put State Treasurer Richard Mourdock up against Senator Lugar in the primary election. The Chicago Tribune reports that Mourdock is up 10 points in a poll conducted over the weekend before the primary election. The same newspaper quotes Mourdock, in a different article, as saying that, “The time for being collegial is past. It’s time for confrontation.”

(This, of course, makes one wonder at Mr. Mourdock’s powers of observation and analysis. If he has been watching the Republicans on the national stage since the inauguration of President Obama, and he has evaluted anything taking place in Washington as collegial, then Richard Mourdock is a retard. And yet people in Indiana are going to vote for this monkey, which once again reinforces the overwhelmingly obvious conclusion that Indiana is a stupid state populated by mostly stupid people, who will believe whatever they are told to believe by the puppet masters who control the completely context-free zone of television advertising.)

Unlike most of the humans in Congress, Senator Lugar has a long list of significant accomplishments, and a history of working and playing well with others. He co-sponsored the DREAM Act, a piece of legislation that would, more than any other solution offered by anyone anywhere on earth, help to solve the problem of illegal immigration. However, because it is not a xenophobic, racist solution, most Americans—especially gun-toting Republican lunatics in the border towns—are not in favor of it (if you can actually find someone who knows enough about it to discuss it). He has also worked tirelessly to reduce the stockpiles of nuclear weapons around the world; but that’s also a non-starter for a lot of people in the post-Tea Party world, because even though Senator Lugar is better known generally for having worked with former Senator Sam Nunn on nuclear stockpile reduction, he’s better known of late for having worked with former Senator Barack Obama on the same issue. That kind of thing does not sit well with the swastika coalition of the Republican Party.

Most of the time, career politicans—Senator Lugar is seeking his 7th term in the United States Senate, following eight years as mayor of Indianapolis—wind up getting complacent, with the quality of their work becoming subject to the law of diminishing returns; but Senator Lugar is the rare example of someone who has devoted his life to public service and whose work in that capacity merits the continuation of that service. A sclerotic Congress will have a hard time drumming up support for and passage of the DREAM Act. Such an institution does not just benefit from having someone like Senator Lugar in its ranks—it absolutely requires someone like him.

You need to be very wary of people who say that Senator Lugar is part of the problem in Washington. There is literally no factual basis for this assertion, and such an assertion is more than likely being uttered by a racist who hates Senator Lugar for having worked with then-Senator Obama. It is with this in mind that I will grit my teeth and ask for a Republican ballot at my (new) polling place here in an hour or so. The earth contains very few Republicans of any shred of value at all. Senator Richard Lugar is one of those rare people, and I support his continued service in the United States Senate.