David Brooks thinks Orrin Hatch and Dick Lugar are behaving dishonorably:

As Jonathan Weisman reported in The Times on Sunday, Hatch has a lifetime rating of 78 percent from the ultra-free market Club for Growth, but, in the past two years, he has miraculously jumped to 100 percent and 99 percent, respectively. Lugar has earned widespread respect for his thoughtful manner and independent ways. Now he’s more of a reliable Republican foot soldier.

Still, it is worth pointing out that this behavior is not entirely honorable. It’s not honorable to adjust your true nature in order to win re-election. It’s not honorable to kowtow to the extremes so you can preserve your political career.

Perhaps Brooks should think about this another way. Is it dishonorable for elected representatives to represent their core constituents’ views and interests as much as possible? Is it dishonorable to become more attentive to constituents’ priorities in response to increased public dissatisfaction with Congress? If Lugar suddenly started denouncing arms control as dangerous, that would be dishonorable because it would be so completely contrary to everything he has claimed to believe for decades, but that’s not what he has been doing.

Compare what Hatch and Lugar have done in the last year or two with the way Joe Lieberman responded to opposition from inside his own party. It’s true that Lieberman refused to budge on his support for the Iraq war in the 2006 primary, and he lost his re-nomination fight for that reason, but he then fled his party and insisted on running for re-election as an independent. There was no danger of any “kowtowing” here. Instead he demonstrated contempt for the voters that had put him in office. In the end, Lieberman was far more concerned about preserving his political career than most incumbent Senators that tack towards the party base ahead of an election year. When Lieberman lost his re-nomination bid, Brooks was appalled that the dead-end defender of a disastrous war had been “purged” and praised Lieberman as one of those “heterodox politicians who distrust ideological purity, who rebel against movement groupthink, who believe in bipartisanship both as a matter of principle and as a practical necessity.” It’s worth noting here that the so-called rebel against “movement groupthink” has been a reliable supporter of Washington consensus groupthink throughout most of his career, because that is actually the best way to acquire and keep power. That doesn’t seem all that honorable.