By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.comÂ
INDIANAPOLIS – Soon, if the fates are kind, it all will be over.
This Republican U.S. Senate primary campaign has been one of the ugliest and most dispiriting in the country and in the state’s history.
The three candidates – former Indiana Rep. Mike Braun, U.S. Rep. Luke Messer and U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita – have done nothing to speak to what one of the founders of the GOP, an obscure fellow by the name of Abraham Lincoln, referred to as “the better angels of our nature.â€
Instead, they have spent all their time attacking each other.
Just a few days ago, Rokita’s campaign published a supposed “children’s†book attacking Messer called, “Oh, The Places You’ll Forget.†It was filled with nasty and not particularly funny references to Messer’s residency. (He has a home in the D.C. area, where his children go to school, and another weekend place in Tennessee.)
Not to be outdone, Braun has released a campaign commercial that attacks Rokita as “Todd the Fraud.†The spot doesn’t mince words. It calls Rokita a liar and a cheat.
There is a reason this race is so mean-spirited – one that only makes the nastiness more depressing.
There isn’t a millimeter’s worth of difference among the candidates on the “issues,†such as they are.
They all want to embrace President Donald Trump’s agenda. They’re in favor of building the wall, of kicking everyone who isn’t a direct descendant of the Puritans at Plymouth Rock out of the country and of nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize and carving his image into Mount Rushmore.
Because they don’t disagree on anything substantive, they can’t have a debate, civil or otherwise, over the “issues.†They can’t make their campaign a contest of ideas.
So, to differentiate their candidacies from the others, they have turned to character assassination. Each candidate wants to make his opponents seem like unworthy vehicles to represent the cause – again, such as it is – they all embrace.
If this race were an aberration, that would be disheartening enough.
But it’s not likely to be the only primary race that is this vicious and this insipid.
We live in a time of relentless partisanship. Both Democrats and Republicans are inclined to see any deviation from creed – regardless of how innovative, common-sense or effective – as something akin to blasphemy.
And they seek out ways to punish infidels.
To some degree, this is the case with both parties, but it is particularly true of the Republican Party.
At one time, the GOP was the laboratory for innovation in public policy. It was the party’s whole-hearted commitment to discovering and implementing new ways to solve problems that fueled the rise of creative and effective Republican leaders from Ronald Reagan to Mitch Daniels.
Things have changed.
The unholy influence of dark money from so many special-interest groups – many of which are merely shell organizations designed to hide the clear and narrow financial interests of their funders – has made the party more a vehicle for enforcing doctrine, however hidebound or ultimately self-defeating, than anything else.
The party leadership and the party apparatus now exist to make sure that Republicans everywhere march in lockstep.
The seat that Braun, Messer, and Rokita seek to win was held by former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar for 36 years. Lugar lost his seat not to a Democrat, but to a Republican-backed and funded by outside special-interest groups who wanted to punish Lugar for daring to think for himself.
Add to this unfortunate development the arrival of Trump and his shattering of any limits on personal invective and we have the makings of a truly toxic stew.
If the president of the United States calls anyone who disagrees with him, Republican or Democrat, a liar or a crook or a degenerate, politicians further down the food chain will follow suit.
Mike Braun, Luke Messer, and Todd Rokita aren’t bad guys.
But not one of them is strong enough to swim against the tide and stand for something other than personal ambition – for anything other than a desire to be the loudest bullfrog in the swampland.
That’s why the best the rest of us can hope for is that this swim in the cesspool will end.
And it will — soon, but not soon enough.
FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits†WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
The City-County Observer posted this article without bias, opinion or editing.
