A Republican who could work across the aisle, and call out the leader of his party when obvious falsehoods are made.
Last of his kindâŚ
Lugar tried to counter questions about his demeanor, contending that the presidency is âserious business. The presidency is not entertainment.â But he was chafed at criticism that he was too straight, too smart, too dull.
âI donât know what that means,â he said. âIs it better to have someone stupid? Or mediocre? Or halfway there?â
A foreshadowing of todayâs troubled times, where on a good day -we get mere stupidity.
RIP sir.
Rest in peace.
"I donât know what that means,â he said. âIs it better to have someone stupid? Or mediocre? Or halfway there?â
I know how Vladimir Putin would answer that question.
It turns out that stress can aggravate CIPD, the autoimmune disease that Lugar died from.
Anyone who cares deeply about America experiences signficantly increased stress thanks to Trump. This would be even more true with someone like Lugar, who was forced to watched as Trump dismantled his lifeâs work â the reduction of nuclear arms.
I hope the Lugar family makes it clear that they donât want anyone from Trumpâs family or administration coming to his funeral.
I had no idea that he was ill.
Lugar tried to counter questions about his demeanor, contending that the presidency is âserious business. The presidency is not entertainment.â
As paul says, it probably added to his demise to see Rump tear this country apart . RIP to maybe the last decent Republican Senator.
âIs it better to have someone stupid? Or mediocre? Or halfway there?â
Putin isnât the only âYes:â â apparently, the Reactionary electorate agrees with him.
And itâs not just Donnie: Nunes and Jordan, among others, were reelected.
No doubt tribute will be pouring in by the boatloadâŚ
All of which will contain the unspoken preamble of âUnlike Donald TrumpâŚâ
Senator Lugar was in front of me in line at the airport in DC a few years back and we had a really pleasant conversation when I struck one up with him. Brief encounter of course, but not hard to tell he was a very decent man. Rest in peace sir.
I wonder if trump will wait a few days before bashing the dead once again.
Rip Senator
the old guard steadily disappears while the new guards watch democracy disappear.
Thatâs a lovely remembrance.
I had no idea he was ill.
Unfortunately Lugar was possessed of Republican DNA. He did not see fit to criticize Trump in any meaningful way. The destruction of the United Statesâ national security and international alliances must certainly have pained him, but of course when it came to party loyalty over patriotic interests, party loyalty prevailed. Sorry to sound so sour about it, but the bottom line here is that this was a careerist Republican party operative. Every American had the choice, over the last 40 years, to embrace or reject the vision of America as whites-first, rich-people-first, oil-companies-first, guns-first, democracy-last country. Lugar embraced that vision. I donât mourn the death of Nazis, and I donât mourn the death of Republicans. Sorry, but thatâs how I feel.
Lugarâs passing emphasizes the gigantic socio-cultural shift the GOP has undergone over the past four decades since he was first elected Senator in 1976. At that time, the Christian right was just beginning to assert its political power in the GOP, with Jerry Falwell barnstorming across the country in a series of âI Love Americaâ rallies. Falwell formally created the âMoral Majorityâ in 1979, and in 1980 Reagan and the power structure in the GOP recognized that Evangelicals and extreme conservative Catholics were a potent electoral voting bloc. The Republican caucus in the Senate already had been infected with the far-right Christian extremism that would soon capture the party entirely, with Jesse Helms being elected in 1972, and re-elected in 1978.
Not all Republicans were comfortable with the rapidly growing influence of the Evangelicals in their party:
âOn religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of Godâs name on oneâs behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.â
âIâm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in âA,â âB,â âCâ and âD.â Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?â
"And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of âconservatism.â
âMark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and theyâre sure trying to do so, itâs going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they canât and wonât compromise. I know, Iâve tried to deal with them.â
The Republican who spoke these words was not Nelson Rockefeller, or Jacob Javits, or Ed Brooke, or Lowell Weicker, or any of the other moderate Republicans who still existed back then. Nope, the speaker was none other than arch-conservative Barry Goldwater.
Goldwaterâs comments illustrate the infernal engine that was going to re-make the GOP: religion.
Prior to the CR acts of '64 and '65, Nixonâs Southern Strategy, and the entrance of Evangelicals into politics, the vast majority of Evangelicals came directly out of the Southern Baptist tradition, and that denomination was heavily centered in the South. Prior to 1964, Southern Baptists in the South would have been overwhelmingly Democratic in party orientation, since the GOP was barely present in the Confederacy, and the Democratic Party legacy in the South was unfortunately directly tied to Jim Crow. White Christian churchesâthe large majority of which were Southern Baptist and other related denominationsâwere strident opponents of the civil rights movement. Falwellâs own entrance into partisan politics was not initially because of abortionâit was because of his opposition to integration of public schools, which led to the widespread creation of âsegregation academiesâ across the South, including his own Liberty College.
In contrast, the Republican Party up to the late 1970s had been the party of mainstream white Protestantismâespecially the Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian churches. In the main, the notion of Biblical Inerrancy was not nearly as central to their theological beliefs as it was for Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, and other affiliated denominations. Until the advent of the anti-abortion movement, a majority of Roman Catholics were Democrats, especially above the Mason-Dixon Line.
Fast forward to 2019, and the virtual entirety of the white Evangelical Movement has convinced itself that Donald Trump is the most Godly President in history, and Evangelicals are by far the single most important Republican voting bloc. Without them, neither Trump, or GWB for that matter, would have gotten within sniffing distance of the White House.
What does all this have to do with Goldwater and Lugar? While not religiously observant, Goldwaterâs roots were Episcopalian and Jewish. Lugar was a mainstream Methodist. While neither can be conflated with Unitarianism, neither can they be theologically and culturally lumped in with Biblical-inerrancy spouting Evangelical Christianism, which is now central to the toxicity of modern Republican ideology.
Pleas donât be annoyed but they are not growing. All christian denominations are losing members. There are now more Americans who identify as atheists than there are American Catholics or American Protestants.
Let me see if I can find the article where I read that so I can link to some back up
You donât seem to realize that BSD is quoting a statement of Barry Goldwater from 1981. Goldwater was warning America, and the Republican Party in particular, about the dangers of allowing religious fundamentalists to have an unfettered voice in the political processes of a democracy.
The situation described by Goldwater 38 years ago no longer holds. The Republican Party made its alliance with the religious right and now the two are inseparable. The recent increase in the number of atheists is quite possibly a reaction to this.
Not to worry, Iâm not annoyedâIâm familiar with the trend of religious observance in this country, which as you accurately point out is away from organized religion of any sort.
My argument here isnât about religion overall, but its influence within the GOP, specifically Evangelical Christianism; that influence is undeniable, and entirely toxic in my view.
Your reference to the long-term religious trends in this country should be sobering for the GOP; if my own extended family is any indication, the extreme nature of the Evangelical Christianity that now drives Republican Party orthodoxy on a wide range of policy views is also driving away Republicans who are college-educated and belong to mainstream Protestant traditions. I have a 90-year old uncle who is a lifelong Republican and college-educated (as a chemical engineer) mainstream Methodist, and he was so disgusted by Trump and the nature of todayâs science-denying Evangelical GOP that he voted for Hillary Clinton. That would have been literally unthinkable to him less than a decade ago.
It is a reaction. And evangelicals and their politics are driving them away.
I realized that but I was contradicting what he was posting, quotation or not, if you see. Iâm somewhat sensitive to contradicting people that way.
Thanks. Iâm glad you get what I was trying to say.
I think Trump is taking what is left of evangelical christianity down with him.
Iâm not so sure that there isnât an increase in the number of people willing to admit to being atheist. And I agree that some of that is push back, as you surmise.