And another “moderate” Republican bites the dust: Senator Lugar of Indiana goes down in defeat to a tea-partier. That may open a window for the Democrats there, although not a very big one.

I respected Dick Lugar for his foreign policy knowledge and his thorough work on nuclear arms control, but I lost some of that respect when he began automatically voting with all his fellow Republicans once Obama was elected. He took a hard-right turn in his voting habits, either out of conviction or, I suspect, out of fear of exactly the result he got today: being considered “too moderate” for his ever-more-extremist party.

So thanks for the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, Senator. Enjoy your retirement.