Letters to the Editor: Republican Party Not What It Used to Be

Former U.S. Senator Richard Lugar passed away April 28th. Senator Lugar served as a Senator from Indiana for 36 years, from 1977 to 2013, and was known as one of the stalwarts of the Republican Party.

While a U.S. Senator Lugar worked on finding solutions to energy security, world nutrition, and controlling weapons of mass destruction. After leaving the U.S. Senate Lugar continued to work on these issues through the Lugar Center, a non-profit he founded.

Lugar was very concerned about hunger around the world, and children in the U.S. going to school hungry every day. He worked to warn the nation about the national security consequences of fossil fuel dependence. He helped create a highly respected program to reduce the chance of nuclear annihilation and to eliminate weapons of mass destruction.

Unfortunately in 2012 Lugar was defeated in the primary by a Tea Party candidate. It is pretty safe to say that his Tea Party successor did not carry on Lugar’s legacy. In all likelihood in the Republican Party of 2019 Lugar would be pilloried as a d$&@#d socialist.

Today’s Republican Party is represented by people like U.S. Congressman Jim Hagedorn of Minnesota, who recently said, “Nobody in America goes to sleep at night wondering if they’ll be able to feed their families.” Lugar and Hagedorn both carry the label Republican, but that label means something totally different in 2019 than just a few years ago when Richard Lugar was a powerful leader in the U.S. Senate.

Charles Frisk

Green Bay, Wisconsin