John Kerry

This makes it even more important that we keep the Senate. Not only is the winner far more extreme than Lugar, this means that one of the other Senators will be the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - or (heaven forbid) the chair. It looks like a relatively junior Senator would be their top person because they have no one other than Lugar who has been there for a substantial time. Scroll down this link ( http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Senate_Committee_on_Foreign_Relations ) to see the list of SFRC members in the 109th Congress - NONE other than Lugar is on the current committee. Hagel, Brownback and Martinez declined to run, Voinvich, Chaffee, Allen, Sununu, and Coleman all lost their elections, and Alexander and Murkowski left the committee.

In addition, the current committee ( http://www.foreign.senate.gov/about/ ) is loaded with extreme conservatives - DeMint, Inhoffe and Lee - in addition to tea party favorite Rubio. (There are other ultra conservatives like Risch and Barrasso. This leaves Corker and Isakson as the most reasonable. This committee would be obnoxious if the Republicans take the Senate.