So it looks as if Richard Lugar is going to lose Tuesday's GOP Senate primary in Indiana. Hoosier Republicans are likely to send forth into battle Richard Mourdock, a Tea Party favorite who believes the era of cooperation is over (uh, yeah, it has been; nice that he finally noticed). The natural impulse is to feel sorry for Lugar, but I won't be attending the pity party. Lugar and other Republican senators should have spoken out long ago about the extremism that has overtaken their party and the way it is asphyxiating a system of government that wasn't designed to withstand such assaults. History will record his cowardice for failing to do so—and will remember that he could have gone down fighting instead of whimpering.