As Senator John Warner Goes ...



As Senator John Warner goes ... so goeth the Senate (Republicans?). We have nothing but the deepest respect for this man and his calibre of moral seriousness. It would be difficult to find a more sober and well-respected member of that most exclusive of clubs, the United States Senate (Only the college of Cardinals, the See of Peter, may be its peer), than John Warner. The fiery ambitions of his youth -- and, aren't we all that way? -- have cooled, leaving the Senate with a silvery-haired cenrist statesman, the sort of dispassionate man the Founding Fathers would have wanted as a legislator (And, yes, we cannot fail to note that that vision did not include Women or Minorities). Warner risked his safe Senate seat in Virginia some years ago, you'll remember, to cock-block that low grade piece of ass Oliver "Ollie" North from becoming a Junior Senator. Warner campaigned for Independent Marshall Coleman against North, costing him the seat. Warner was rewarded for his risky, unselfish act of statesmanship with a primary challenger from the right-wing freaks in the party. From Wikipedia:

"Because of his centrist stances on many issues and because of his 1993 and 1994 snubbing of fellow Republicans, Warner faced opposition from angry members of his own party when he decided to run for re-election to a fourth term in the Senate in 1996. Many of Virginia's staunch Republican voters began a 'Dump Warner' campaign to try to deny him re-nomination. However, Virginia's GOP party rules allow the incumbent to select the nominating process. Knowing he would probably lose the nomination at a convention or caucus, where only party regulars would be voting, he selected a primary. In Virginia, primaries are open to all registered voters, so Warner encouraged Democrats and independents to vote in that primary. His strategy worked and he handily defeated Republican rival James C. Miller III for the nomination."

Glorious Warner, Naval strategist to the end, beat back the barbarian hordes. There have been rumors among The Chattering Class that Warner will not run for a sixth -- sixth! -- term in the Senate (He would be 81). Machiavellian powerbrokers within the Republican Party, however, are trying to get him to stay in for one more term, out of fear of a routing by the resurging Democrats, as Virginia is now a purplish state, and not a lock for a Republican succession as it has been in the past.

Whatever the case, Warner -- and the upright Senator Lugar's -- courageous stand on the Iraq War is sure to taint their legacies within their Party hierarchy for the short term (Can't you just see those oily neocons on the attack on this Sundays talking head shows?), but in a hundred years both will most certainly be regarded as American Patriots. It is a sad truism that centrists rarely, if ever, are recognized in their own era for their efforts to look beyond parochial party interests and towards the greater horizon wellbeing of the commonweal.

After this last twilight struggle in the Senate and Warner is back on his estate, with his horses, away from the partisan conflagration that has taken over DC, we will look forward to his memoirs: military and political, to see what it was like before the wing-nuts stole the show.