BREAKING NEWS: Six-term Sen. Lugar defeated in Ind. GOP primary

[sofa king]

58. His parting remarks deserve translation for our lurkers.

It's tough being a conservative; one cannot read a dictionary because its title is vaguely pornographic and it is sure to contain words that should be trumped by the Second Amendment. And then your Nook is all full of holes and you are back to square one.

So here's the text of Lugar's remarks, translated into Knuckledragger. The original statement:

He (Mourdock) and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party.

Translation:

We're both assholes, but I know that to be a successful asshole, one has to be a lying asshole. He has promised to say no to everything until his diaper is full. Which is not a lie, so it won't work.

But it works in every possible way for the Democrats. It opens the seat up and will at least double the costs of the GOP election efforts in Indiana. It gives Dems an outside chance at a pickup in a brutally imbalanced Senate cycle (23 Democrats up for reelection versus 10 Republicans). It rips one of the last Republicans capable of crafting or evaluating foreign policy (or, in fact, any legislation at all) out of the process, making them even less capable of nuanced opposition in the Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate in general.

What Lugar knows that Mourdock doesn't, what he is talking about above, is that a freshman Senator has about seven days in office to either toe the line of comity and compromise, or be shuffled off to the Subcommittee on Utilities Certification and Kangaroos for the next six years. Even Republican Senators need someone they can work with; Mourdock isn't that guy, and they will have to place Mourdock someplace where he can do minimal harm, and therefore have minimal influence in the Senate.

Even a victory for the Republicans at this point will be a devastating loss in the mechanics of Senate politics. We've won big this week.