Hits and Misses

The Tea Party has already published its Senate hit list for 2012: Olympia Snowe, Dick Lugar, Bob Corker and Orrin Hatch. Jon Kyl also voted for TARP, so we shall have to see about him. In 2014, expect them to go after Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham.

Although he has since become much more critical, Lugar voted in favour of the invasion of Iraq. However, he is in many ways the last Senator to stand as an heir and successor of Republican calls for Europe to revert to pre-1914 borders and thus end the First World War. Of those Republicans who resisted entry into the Second World War until America was actually attacked by either side. Of Eisenhower’s ending of the Korean War, his even-handed approach to Israel and the Palestinians, his non-intervention in Indo-China, and his denunciation of the military-industrial complex. Of Nixon’s pursuit of détente with China, and the ending of the Vietnam War by him and by Ford, an old stalwart of the America First Committee.

Of Reagan’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 1983, and, especially, his initiation of nuclear arms reduction in Europe. Of James Baker’s call to “lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel” and to “foreswear annexation, stop settlement activity”. Of Republican opposition to the global trigger-happiness of the Clinton Administration. And of Bush the Younger’s removal of American troops from Saudi Arabia after 9/11, thus ensuring that there has been no further attack on American soil. No wonder, at the time, that Lugar all but publicly endorsed Obama.

As for Grahamnesty, did the Tea Partiers, not least including Joe Wilson of their Congressional Caucus, support against him the only Ron Paul supporter to stand for the Senate in 2008, Bob Conley? Conley had become so fed up with the Republican Party’s anti-conservative trade and war policies, and with its failure to do anything practical against abortion or in defence of traditional marriage, that he had quit, registered as a Democrat, and won the Democratic primary. There was a rumour that Conley was going to repeat the trick in Wilson’s Congressional District, but, alas, that has come to nought. What would the Tea Party have done? Why did it do nothing to make that happen?

Conley is not right about everything. But a pro-life and pro-family Catholic and Ron Paul activist who was a Democrat specifically for those reasons would certainly have been a welcome addition to a body of House Democrats which, in stark contrast to what will within weeks be the extremely narrow sectarianism across the aisle, must seek to accommodate and to reflect the Blue Dog Coalition, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the New Democrat Coalition, the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, and those who belong to none of those four, as well as the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and those who do not and cannot belong to any of those three.

It says all that needs to be said about the Tea Partiers that they want rid of Lugar in 2012, but support Wilson in 2010, and supported Graham and McCain in 2008.