The battle for the Republican Senate Seat currently held by Richard "Dick" Lugar is getting national scrutiny. Lugar became pretty well known as "Obama's Republican" which in these times is akin to "Mud." Lugar's McCain-like compromising and record of forming coalitions suddenly looks like such a negative it takes away any committee clout his tenure has earned him. Some of us feel that Lugar has become a burden rather than an blessing to the citizens of the State of Indiana. Allow me to share this article from the online Commentary Magazine:
photo credit
Obama’s ‘Favorite Republican’ Backs Away From the President
Richard Lugar was considered a mentor and a friend to Barack Obama during their time in the Senate together, but with a tough primary fight looming for the Indianan next year as he seeks a seventh term, it appears that he has decided the last thing he needs is to be considered the president’s “favorite Republican.” With 2012 just around the corner, Lugar has become a frequent critic of the administration as well as a more loyal member of the Republican caucus.
Lugar is the senior Republican in the upper house and an old-school bi-partisan type as well as the Senate’s leading foreign policy “realist.” As Politico notes in an interesting feature on the Obama-Lugar breakup, in the weeks after the 2010 election when the Tea Party insurgency was riding high, Lugar made it clear he wouldn’t truckle to his party’s core constituency. He opposed a ban on earmarks and helped Obama push the START treaty with Russia through the lame duck Congress.
But with a popular Republican challenger seeking to capitalize on the unease about the senator’s establishment ways among the party’s grass roots, Lugar is now highlighting disagreements with his former Senate pal and even denying that they were ever close. Lugar blasted the president for not consulting with Congress over the conflict in Libya and even withdrew his co-sponsorship of the “Dream Act” because of his anger at Obama’s decision to engage hyper-partisan demagoguery on immigration. Even more interesting is the fact that Lugar voted with fellow Republicans 82 percent of the time in the previous Congress. This year the number is 97 percent.
Lugar has obviously come a long way since he actually served as sounding board on foreign policy issues for Obama prior to the Democrat’s presidential debate with John McCain (though he says he voted for the Republican) in 2008. But though Lugar now claims all the talk about his friendship with the president was an exaggeration, it’s more likely that his upcoming primary clash with Indiana state Treasure Richard Mourdock is what has concentrated his mind.
Democrats, who face an uphill challenge to hold onto to their slender majority in the Senate next year, are openly rooting for Mourdock to defeat. But just as Mourdock is not Christine O’Donnell, neither is red state Indiana comparable to blue Delaware. A Lugar primary loss would not necessarily translate into a November gain for the Democrats.
The Lugar re-election campaign will be an interesting test of the current state of the Republican Party as well as of how red Indiana really is. Though we can expect to hear a lot about how outrageous it is that GOP voters would even consider dumping a venerable institution like Lugar, after 35 years of his go-along-to-get-along style, it is hardly surprising that party activists yearn for a more forthright advocate for their beliefs.
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Richard Mourdock pic credit
Richard Mourdock isn't just a "Tea Party Candidate" but rather he is a well-respected Treasurer of State who is an accomplished speaker and well-versed on the law and history beyond the norm. He is a classic conservative Republican which means his positions are a fastball down the middle for Tea Party enthusiasts. Mourdock has been Mourdock throughout his tenure in office, a man who will take a stand for right over wrong no matter what the odds. By comparison, Lugar appears to have become a good-old Beltway Boy who needs to put on a conservative mask for about 18 months in order to get Hoosiers to keep him in office.
Some Hoosiers like the idea of having the old horse running in harness, able to use his experience and political capital to make a good deal for the folks back home now and then. Many of them remember the Lugar of days gone by, when he seemed to be a fairly ordinary Republican Senator who was normally on the conservative side of things.
Be ready for a steady stream of Lugar letters and emails in which he will attempt to paint himself with a new brush as a dependable conservative and a great asset to the people of Indiana. He will have accumulated all sorts of sources of income for a primary campaign that promises to be as tough as the general election.
However, if you only vote with the conservative side 82% of the time one year and suddenly you hit 97% the next year? Very few Hoosiers will believe that Lugar has suddenly had a change of heart but rather will see that he is trying very hard to appear to be a guy they want in office. But no Hoosier conservative worth his salt would have EVER voted for Elena Kagan to be on the Supreme Court! Seriously, Kagan had never been a judge of any kind on any level and had no qualifications for office other than Obama wanted her and she had bounced back and forth between the academic and political arenas. Elena Kagan represents a challenge to the first two amendments to the Constitution and is yet another judicial appointee willing to try to legislate rather than arbitrate the law. By that one vote, Lugar announced that going along was more important to him than getting it right. Kagan was not a first, as Lugar also supported Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Leftist activists all in a row.
Dick Lugar is out of touch and out of step with Hoosiers. In my opinion, of course. But I am not alone...as this post on Red State suggests:
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Richard Lugar would be well-served by retiring from office at the end of this term and thereby put a period on the paragraph that is his service in the Senate. There would be a "but" in the middle yet it would at least end gracefully. Lugar is 79 years old, has been in the Senate since 1977 and before that was Mayor of Indianapolis. Northwest Indiana voters could really use a Senator who knows we exist. This year Richard Mourdock came to the Lake County Lincoln Dinner even though Mike Pence was the guest speaker. He came to be a keynote speaker at the Lake County Fairgrounds during the last Senate primary battle. Mourdock has noticed that this very blue corner of Indiana is moving towards the Red. I know this, I have met and spoken with Richard Mourdock three times in the last two years at local events whereas I have never seen Richard Lugar at an event near me in all his years in office. I doubt that Richard Lugar has ever concerned himself much with us. Am I wrong, or does it appear that the long reign of Dick Lugar will end with a pratfall?
Lugar is the senior Republican in the upper house and an old-school bi-partisan type as well as the Senate’s leading foreign policy “realist.” As Politico notes in an interesting feature on the Obama-Lugar breakup, in the weeks after the 2010 election when the Tea Party insurgency was riding high, Lugar made it clear he wouldn’t truckle to his party’s core constituency. He opposed a ban on earmarks and helped Obama push the START treaty with Russia through the lame duck Congress.
But with a popular Republican challenger seeking to capitalize on the unease about the senator’s establishment ways among the party’s grass roots, Lugar is now highlighting disagreements with his former Senate pal and even denying that they were ever close. Lugar blasted the president for not consulting with Congress over the conflict in Libya and even withdrew his co-sponsorship of the “Dream Act” because of his anger at Obama’s decision to engage hyper-partisan demagoguery on immigration. Even more interesting is the fact that Lugar voted with fellow Republicans 82 percent of the time in the previous Congress. This year the number is 97 percent.
Lugar has obviously come a long way since he actually served as sounding board on foreign policy issues for Obama prior to the Democrat’s presidential debate with John McCain (though he says he voted for the Republican) in 2008. But though Lugar now claims all the talk about his friendship with the president was an exaggeration, it’s more likely that his upcoming primary clash with Indiana state Treasure Richard Mourdock is what has concentrated his mind.
Democrats, who face an uphill challenge to hold onto to their slender majority in the Senate next year, are openly rooting for Mourdock to defeat. But just as Mourdock is not Christine O’Donnell, neither is red state Indiana comparable to blue Delaware. A Lugar primary loss would not necessarily translate into a November gain for the Democrats.
The Lugar re-election campaign will be an interesting test of the current state of the Republican Party as well as of how red Indiana really is. Though we can expect to hear a lot about how outrageous it is that GOP voters would even consider dumping a venerable institution like Lugar, after 35 years of his go-along-to-get-along style, it is hardly surprising that party activists yearn for a more forthright advocate for their beliefs.
~~~~~~~~
Richard Mourdock pic credit
Richard Mourdock isn't just a "Tea Party Candidate" but rather he is a well-respected Treasurer of State who is an accomplished speaker and well-versed on the law and history beyond the norm. He is a classic conservative Republican which means his positions are a fastball down the middle for Tea Party enthusiasts. Mourdock has been Mourdock throughout his tenure in office, a man who will take a stand for right over wrong no matter what the odds. By comparison, Lugar appears to have become a good-old Beltway Boy who needs to put on a conservative mask for about 18 months in order to get Hoosiers to keep him in office.
Some Hoosiers like the idea of having the old horse running in harness, able to use his experience and political capital to make a good deal for the folks back home now and then. Many of them remember the Lugar of days gone by, when he seemed to be a fairly ordinary Republican Senator who was normally on the conservative side of things.
Be ready for a steady stream of Lugar letters and emails in which he will attempt to paint himself with a new brush as a dependable conservative and a great asset to the people of Indiana. He will have accumulated all sorts of sources of income for a primary campaign that promises to be as tough as the general election.
However, if you only vote with the conservative side 82% of the time one year and suddenly you hit 97% the next year? Very few Hoosiers will believe that Lugar has suddenly had a change of heart but rather will see that he is trying very hard to appear to be a guy they want in office. But no Hoosier conservative worth his salt would have EVER voted for Elena Kagan to be on the Supreme Court! Seriously, Kagan had never been a judge of any kind on any level and had no qualifications for office other than Obama wanted her and she had bounced back and forth between the academic and political arenas. Elena Kagan represents a challenge to the first two amendments to the Constitution and is yet another judicial appointee willing to try to legislate rather than arbitrate the law. By that one vote, Lugar announced that going along was more important to him than getting it right. Kagan was not a first, as Lugar also supported Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Leftist activists all in a row.
Dick Lugar is out of touch and out of step with Hoosiers. In my opinion, of course. But I am not alone...as this post on Red State suggests:
Richard Lugar Insults Conservatives, Indiana GOP County Chairmen
Yesterday, I received an interesting piece of spam from Richard Lugar’s campaign. I call it “interesting” because it indicates that Lugar apparently intends to court voters who might be contemplating a vote for Richard Mourdock by calling them morons. And then speaking to them as if they were morons:
Second, while I agree that O’Donnell and Angle were bad candidates (and strongly disagree on Buck), it’s ridiculous to claim that the GOP would have done better if it had nominated the candidates who were routed by the aforementioned bad candidates in the primary. This is the same line of thinking that posits that we lost to Obama because McCain was such a crappy candidate, and we should have instead nominated… one of the people who lost to McCain. Does not compute.
Third, math is apparently not a strong suit of Dick Lugar. The GOP currently controls 47 seats in the Senate. Adding three more seats (CO, NV, DE) would put us at 50. Thus, even supposing Castle would vote to repeal Obamacare, the best we could accomplish on an Obamacare repeal vote would be a tie, which would be broken by Joe Biden. Which is completely academic anyway, since a) the Democrats would filibuster the vote and b) failing all of that, Obama would just veto it. But, yeah, if those TEA Party people weren’t such morons, we’d totally have repealed Obamacare by now.
We’re not halfway through 2011, and Richard Lugar’s campaign already smells of desperation. The main obstacle to his defeat at this point is disunity among the many groups of people Richard Lugar is currently insulting.
Unfortunately, a large number of Republican County Chairmen have been duped into participating in the same failed scheme that resulted in Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle and cost us two crucial Senate Seats in 2010. (If the Republican parties in Delaware, Nevada, and Colorado had taken the Reagan “big tent” approach, we would have already repealed Obamacare.) Mr. Mourdock has hired the same consultants that brought us these unelectable candidates, and with Mr. Donnelly joining the race the pattern is complete.A few things. First, while a candidate might think voters are morons for not wanting to vote for him, it is generally a bad idea to say it out loud, on the off chance that some of those voters might be persuaded to come home.
Second, while I agree that O’Donnell and Angle were bad candidates (and strongly disagree on Buck), it’s ridiculous to claim that the GOP would have done better if it had nominated the candidates who were routed by the aforementioned bad candidates in the primary. This is the same line of thinking that posits that we lost to Obama because McCain was such a crappy candidate, and we should have instead nominated… one of the people who lost to McCain. Does not compute.
Third, math is apparently not a strong suit of Dick Lugar. The GOP currently controls 47 seats in the Senate. Adding three more seats (CO, NV, DE) would put us at 50. Thus, even supposing Castle would vote to repeal Obamacare, the best we could accomplish on an Obamacare repeal vote would be a tie, which would be broken by Joe Biden. Which is completely academic anyway, since a) the Democrats would filibuster the vote and b) failing all of that, Obama would just veto it. But, yeah, if those TEA Party people weren’t such morons, we’d totally have repealed Obamacare by now.
We’re not halfway through 2011, and Richard Lugar’s campaign already smells of desperation. The main obstacle to his defeat at this point is disunity among the many groups of people Richard Lugar is currently insulting.
~~~~~~~~
Richard Lugar would be well-served by retiring from office at the end of this term and thereby put a period on the paragraph that is his service in the Senate. There would be a "but" in the middle yet it would at least end gracefully. Lugar is 79 years old, has been in the Senate since 1977 and before that was Mayor of Indianapolis. Northwest Indiana voters could really use a Senator who knows we exist. This year Richard Mourdock came to the Lake County Lincoln Dinner even though Mike Pence was the guest speaker. He came to be a keynote speaker at the Lake County Fairgrounds during the last Senate primary battle. Mourdock has noticed that this very blue corner of Indiana is moving towards the Red. I know this, I have met and spoken with Richard Mourdock three times in the last two years at local events whereas I have never seen Richard Lugar at an event near me in all his years in office. I doubt that Richard Lugar has ever concerned himself much with us. Am I wrong, or does it appear that the long reign of Dick Lugar will end with a pratfall?
