WASHINGTON — Mavericks are not in vogue these days on Capitol Hill, a place where hyper-partisanship and obduracy seem to be their own rewards. 
 
 But Senator Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican who played that role long before it had a brand name, is standing against his party on a number of significant issues at a politically dangerous time to do so. 
 
 A reliable conservative for decades on every issue, he nonetheless fought President Ronald Reagan — and prevailed — on apartheid penalties and over the Philippine presidential election. He went head to head with Senator Jesse Helms in the 1990s over the nomination of William F. Weld, former governor of Massachusetts, as ambassador to Mexico. 
 
 Now, in the heat of the post-primary lame-duck Congressional session, he is defying his party on an earmark ban, a bill that would create a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants, a military spending authorization bill and an arms control treaty with Russia. 
 
 He even declined to sign a brief supporting state lawsuits against President Obama’s health care law because he saw it as political posturing. 
 
 Now Mr. Lugar’s willingness to buck his party is leading to talk that he will face a primary challenge from a Tea Party candidate when he runs for re-election in 2012. It is a possibility that Mr. Lugar, who said the current environment in Washington was “disappointing” and “without a doubt” the most polarized he had seen since joining the Senate in 1977, understands clearly even as he declines to modify his positions. 
 
 “I’m always optimistic,” he said in an interview in his office on Wednesday, “that good reasoning, good will and proper spirit is going to lead to constructive results even as I describe, as I have, intense polarization that I think is currently there.” 
 
 Even after the midterm rout that will remove many long-serving members from Congress, the idea that Mr. Lugar would be vulnerable to a primary challenge is a chilling notion to many Republicans, a symbol of symbolism gone too far. 
 
 “If Dick Lugar,” said John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, “having served five terms in the U.S. Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy, is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.” 
 
 Mr. Danforth, who was first elected the same year as Mr. Lugar, added, “I’m glad Lugar’s there and I’m not.” 
 
 Mr. Lugar has a long history of carefully chosen battles. He had a deep admiration for Reagan, with whom he worked closely on several military issues, yet at times opposed him. 
 
 In the 1980s, Mr. Lugar pressed legislation with tough sanctions against South Africa intended to help end apartheid and free Nelson Mandela, a bill vetoed by Reagan. 
 
 “I had the sad responsibility as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee then leading the debate to overthrow his veto,” Mr. Lugar said. “The net result of this in due course was the freedom for Nelson Mandela,” he said, adding that he felt vindicated when Mr. Mandela visited the Capitol for lunch. “At the time, not everyone in Indiana agreed with this.” 
 
 Further, as a United States representative to monitor the Philippine election between Corazon Aquino and Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, Mr. Lugar publicly disagreed with Reagan, who said at the time that voting irregularities had occurred on both sides, while Mr. Lugar saw fraud only on behalf of the Marcos campaign. 
 
 As such, disagreeing with his colleagues these days on legislation backed by Democrats seems like small change. “There is nothing going on presently that seems to me that has the significance to the world or in terms of foreign policy as those two events,” he said. 
 
 The exception, he added, is the New Start treaty, under which the United States and Russia would pare their nuclear arsenals and resume lapsed mutual inspections, a signature foreign policy goal of the Obama administration. Republican colleagues have opposed the treaty and would prefer to push the matter into the 112th Congress, which begins in January, potentially dooming it. 
 
 This has upset Mr. Lugar, who called on his colleagues to “do your duty” before they broke for Thanksgiving. Nuclear disarmament is an issue Mr. Lugar has pursued most of his career; in the 1990s he teamed with Sam Nunn, then a Democratic senator from Georgia, on their own program to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Obama became involved in the Nunn-Lugar efforts as a senator and traveled with Mr. Lugar to Russia in 2005. 
 
 Mr. Lugar’s recent breaks with his party have stirred the attention of Indiana Tea Party groups, who have him in their sights. “Senator Lugar has been an upstanding citizen representing us in D. C.,” said Diane Hubbard, a spokeswoman for the Indianapolis Tea Party. “But over the years, he has become more moderate in his voting.” 
 
 Removing him “will be a difficult challenge,” Ms. Hubbard conceded. “But we do believe it’s doable, and we think the climate is right for it and we believe it is a must.” 
 
 Mr. Lugar said he understood that despondence over the economic crisis, a sense that government is more intrusive and a fear that the country’s position on the global stage is becoming more precarious “are the underlying concerns” of partisan troubles. But, he said, “The people speaking to them are speaking to them in extremes.” 
 
 While Republicans enjoyed much success in the midterms in Indiana, most winning candidates had tenuous or no ties to the Tea Party movement. One thing going for Mr. Lugar about 2012, said Matt Bergbower, an assistant professor of political science at Indiana State University, “is the Tea Party here has been sort of secondary in nature.” 
 
 Mr. Lugar will leave nothing to chance. He conducted an internal poll after the election that showed that his popularity was high, and wrote a three-page letter to a family he saw featured in a newspaper, identified as Tea Party supporters, explaining his background as a small-business man and an observant Methodist. 
 
 “I’m very conscious of it,” Mr. Lugar said of a primary threat. “I’ve been in public life a long time.” 
 
 But in the end, he said, “I will continue to be Dick Lugar, and I will try to do the best job I can” in explaining his positions to the people of Indiana. “It’s not my nature to simply seek controversy.” ||||| One was the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; the other, new to Washington, was a Democrat who had spent his political career in the Illinois state Senate and had no experience in arms control or foreign policy. 
 
 Despite their differences, Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar served as mentor and friend to then Sen. Barack Obama, inviting him along on a trip to Russia and Eastern Europe to inspect nuclear sites only a few months after the younger lawmaker was sworn in. 
 
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 “I very much feel like the novice and pupil,” Obama said of their relationship in 2005. 
 
 Now, Obama has again turned to Lugar for help on the nuclear weapons issue, enlisting the Senate’s senior Republican to drum up GOP support for passage of the so-called New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia. But Lugar’s advocacy for this relatively obscure item on Obama’s agenda may not only prove ineffective in bringing around Republicans, but open him up to a primary challenge from the right in two years, putting his long political career at risk for the first time. 
 
 Lugar has unapologetically backed Obama in support of START — a position that has put him at odds with Minority Whip Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who has emerged as the GOP’s leading skeptic of the treaty. But months of lobbying by Lugar and administration officials has produced little to nothing in the way of public support for ratification from any other Republican. In fact, not even two Republican Foreign Relations committee members who voted for it in September — Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) — have said they will support it when it comes to the Senate floor. 
 
 In an attempt to rally bipartisan support for the treaty, the White House has enlisted the kind of GOP foreign policy wise men that Lugar exemplifies — among them former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker. But they have had no success with members of their own party, and it has left them scratching their heads over the source of the GOP opposition. 
 
 “It’s not clear to me what it is,” said Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush who noted that this START treaty is not very different from previous ones negotiated and ratified under Republican presidents. “I’ve got to think that it’s the increasingly partisan nature and the desire for the president not to have a foreign policy victory.” 
 
 But as the clock runs down on the lame duck session of Congress, there has been a conspicuous amount of silence on the part of a handful of moderate GOP senators, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who once would have been more open to arguments from establishment figures such as Scowcroft and Lugar. Collins said in a statement that she will “reserve final judgment” until it comes to the Senate floor. 
 
 Led by Kyl and Corker, Republicans argue that New START focuses on nuclear disarmament but does not do enough to shore up the America's nuclear deterrent capabilities. They have asked for a greater commitment — above and beyond the roughly $85 billion over 10 years that the Obama administration has proposed — to rebuilding the country's nuclear facilities, which they argue have fallen into disarray since the Cold War.
– Dick Lugar gets the "maverick" treatment from the New York Times and Politico, with both suggesting that the Indiana Republican's willingness to buck his own party on key issues leaves him vulnerable to a Tea Party primary challenge in 2012: Politico: Tea Party candidates are already "lining up to oppose him, and are poised to use his friendship with Obama, his lobbying on behalf of START, his support for a repeal of 'don’t ask, don’t tell' and his opposition to a ban on earmarks as issues." Full story here. Times: Lugar's history of taking stands on principle goes back to the days when he defied Reagan on apartheid penalties. "Now, in the heat of the post-primary lame-duck Congressional session, he is defying his party on an earmark ban, a bill that would create a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants, a military spending authorization bill and an arms control treaty with Russia." Full story here. Former GOP Sen. John Danforth: “If Dick Lugar, having served five terms in the US Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy, is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.”