Senator Warner Gives Up The Ghost
Thank goodness, now maybe the seat can be filled with a real conservative.
Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia — the respected former Navy secretary and outspoken critic of the current state of affairs in Iraq — will not seek re-election to a sixth term, he announced Friday.
Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, was first elected to his seat in 1978.
“I say that my work and service to Virginia as a senator will conclude upon the sixth of January, 2009,” said Warner, 80, during a news conference in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the University of Virginia, his alma mater.
“Now, by taking this action, no one can say politics is going to dictate in one way or another how I’m going to decide to speak out on what’s in the best interests of this nation. And I’m going to do that,” Warner said, noting that some have read his recent public criticisms of Iraqi leaders as political posturing.
Ending his Senate career after 30 years, he said, he will be “the second-longest serving United States senator in the history of the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
Their is one thing to say for experience, quite another for over staying your usefulness.
Scrapple Face Perspective Sen. John Warner, R-VA, today said the failure of politicians to make reforms and the lack of progress on “almost any benchmark you can name” have led him to conclude that the only way forward is to pull out of the U.S. Senate, therefore he will not seek reelection at the end of his current term.