Another Act of Treachery By Senator Dick Lugar, And the Political Imbalance in the Senate

Richard Lugar has become the leader of the rampaging RINOs. Ever since the November electoral repudiation of liberalism, Lugar has voted for the FDA farm takeover, Amnesty for illegals, and co-sponsored the child nutrition law. Lugar also opposed the moratorium on earmarks. He has also been the chief architect of the near confirmation of the START, unilateral disarmament treaty in the Senate. In fact, he is so incorrigible in his quest to carry water for America's enemies that he even voted against the McCain amendment to the treaty.

The McCain amendment would have clarified the language of the treaty to exclude missile defense from the reduction of offensive arms. The language of the treaty clearly interconnects the two. For any Senator, much less a Republican, to vote against this amendment, is stupefying. Richard Lugar is so focused on undermining this country’s security and screwing fellow Republicans that he is willing to oppose a common sense amendment that would still allow the treaty to be ratified. Lugar, Bennett, and Voinovich joined every Democrat (except Joe Lieberman) to defeat McCain's amendment.

It is important to note that on the likelihood that Republicans capture the Senate in 2012, Lugar would become chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Throughout his tenure on the committee, Lugar has given cover for Kerry and the radical left in their support for all of America's enemies, including Russia, China, North Korea, Syria, Chavez, and the Palestinians. There is a reason why the Latin American thugs recently named several House Republicans on the foreign relations panel whom they view as threats, but mentioned nothing of Dick Lugar. They know that he is in their court. Lugar despises the notion of American exceptionalism, and embraces every precept of moral relativism and globalism. He has nothing in common with Middle America and his Indiana constituents. Dick Lugar is a Kerry Republican who must be defeated in 2012.

Unfortunately, Lugar is not our only red state RINO. 4 other Republicans voted along with Lugar and every Democrat to defeat the Risch amendment to the START. They were Alexander, Bennett, Corker, and Gregg.

This amendment was a mere attempt "to amend the preamble to the treaty to acknowledge the interrelationship between no strategic and strategic offensive arms". Yet, for Lugar and his band of RINOs, this clarification was too much of an affront to Obama and Putin.

Notice that some red state Republicans opposed these commonsense revisions even while the blue state RINOs (Snowe, Collins, Brown) voted with conservatives. Also, not a single Democrat crossed party lines to strengthen this flawed treaty.

There has clearly been an imbalance of power between the two parties in the Senate for many years. Even Democrats who represent solid red states tend to support the left on almost every issue. It's frankly astounding how even after suffering a shellacking in November; the Democrats have been able to shove through a far left agenda in the lame duck session that affects every aspect of policy; foreign, social, and fiscal. For most of the radical agenda, including START and DADT, the Democrats have been able to retain almost every red state DEM vote, despite their vulnerability in 2012.

Contrast that to the dismal showing from Republicans, in which they not only face dissent from blue state RINOs (Snowe, Collins, Brown), but even from those who represent friendly constituencies. We have Bennett, Corker, Alexander, Murkowski, and Lugar, who represent solid red states, yet have dissented on almost every major issue in the lame duck session. Even when they joined with conservatives to filibuster the omnibus bill, they vacillated until they couldn’t find 9 Republicans to break the opposition. Another striking aspect of the omnibus battle was that McCain said it was “the first time since I’ve been here, we stood up and said ‘enough.’" I’m not sure if that was a Freudian slip, but he was sure on to something there. People often focus too exclusively on the blue state RINOs, and ignore the plethora of red state ones. We have had fifth columnists from Utah, for goodness sakes! Imagine if the Democrats would tolerate the election of a social conservative from Vermont!

The 112th congress will undoubtedly improve slightly as we will be rid of Bennett, Voinovich, Gregg, Lemieux, and Bond. All of these Senators have undermined our position in recent months and we will be happy to see them go. However, the imbalance will still be quite pronounced. While the Democrats can count on red state, vulnerable Dems like Manchin and Webb to do their bidding time and again, we will have plenty of red state, safe Republicans who vote against conservatives. We will still have to contend with Murkowski, Lugar, Alexander, Corker, Hutchinson, Grassley, McCain, Graham, Cochran, and many more red state R's who have a tendency to stab us in the back. If we add to that list those who supported the FDA takeover and the DADT repeal, we would be down to single digits.

The reality is that although grassroots conservatives did a great job in challenging some coronated RINOs this past cycle, we still have a monumental job left. Results from last cycle have shown that had we gotten involved in some primaries at an earlier date, we would have been more successful. We need to challenge every one of the following Senators:

Some observers on our side would recoil at this list and at the notion that these Senators should be challenged. But, they would be missing the point. Incumbents don't own Senate seats until they die or commit a crime. Their term of office expires after six years. Once they are up for reelection, they should have no more of an entitlement to that seat than anyone else. They must stand before conservative primary voters and articulate why the past six years shows that they have served as a proper counterweight against the liberal assault on this country. There are only a few brave souls like Jim DeMint whom we can affirmatively say yes. Most others are lackluster at best and downright contemptible at worst. Unfortunately, we will be forced to suffer through six more years of backstabbing from Lisa Murkowski. Let's get to work now, so we won't be saying the same thing two years from now concerning Lugar and his gang.

Dude's not a RINO.

To be a RINO, you'd have to at least lean somewhat to the middle.

He's a liberal Democrat.

DICK LUGAR:

Voted FOR bailing out the auto industry (ACU-16). Four months later, our president was firing CEOs.Either Richard Lugar favors nationalizing industry, or he's too short-sighted to deserve our trust.Either way, he's bad for the G.O.P.
Voted FOR TARP (ACU-16).
Voted AGAINST returning $350 billion of unspent TARP to the public coffers (ACU-18).
Voted FOR the 2007 expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by $60 billion (ACU-15).This program was created in 1997 only to provide insurance to children from uninsured families who were narrowly above poverty.But 10 years later, the Dems moved to expand the program--and, as always, the devil was in the details. Under threat of Bush veto, Lugar chose to join force with the Democrats and do the following: 1. Re-define "children" to mean "21-year-old adults." 2. Re-define "$80,000 income" to mean “just above poverty." 3. Let some taxpayers pay for other taxpayers' insurance (even if the former make less than the latter and purchase their own insurance). 4. Give incentives for states to “recruit” new enrollees and thus make this big program even bigger (Carney- 1)
Voted FOR the 2009 expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by $32.8 billion.According to the ACU, “The bill raises taxes, expands the program to include legal immigrants and pregnant women, and loosens citizenship requirements. Although the program was designed to help poor children, the bill prohibits the government from covering poor children first” (ACU-18). Every time you hear it said that "once Washington puts something into place, it's just going to keep getting bigger and bigger"—you can and should think of Richard Lugar. Voted FOR a 2004 measure to make gun manufacturers and sellers libel for gun deaths (ACU-12)
Voted AGAINST a 2008 bi- partisan amendment to repeal the D.C. gun ban (ACU-18).
Voted FOR extending the “assault weapons” ban (i.e., ban on collectibles) (ACU-12).For more info about this infringement on ownership rights and the truth about these weapons, please see the following by gun-rights advocate Alan Korwin: "New York Times Recognizes 10 Years of Errors."
Voted AGAINST a cap on future discretionary spending to hold it at 2006 levels (ACU-13).
Voted FOR forcing the US. to comply with the Kyoto Treaty despite our never having ratified it (ACU- 11)
Voted FOR Campaign Finance Reform, one of the greatest abridgments of free speech in our history (WP-6). 1. Read what Brian Darling of the Heritage Foundation says about Campaign Finance Reform: "Campaign Capital; Repeal McCain-Feingold Law And Mandate Disclosure Instead." 2. Hear what McCain himself says about it on The Don Imus Show: "John McCain Admits That McCain- Feingold Is Unconstitutional." 3. Read what Doug Patton of Humanevents.com,says about this criminalization of free speech: "McCain- Feingold Doing What Its Authors Intended."
Voted FOR raising CAFE standards (ACU-13). For a look at the link between higher CAFE standards and increased traffic fatalities, as well as the folly of the economic justifications for higher standards, see what Dennis Kneale has to say: "New CAFE" (CNBC-1).
Voted FOR a 2005 job-killing bill in hopes of keeping the climate from changing. The real kicker is that the bill, which required "greenhouse emissions" be brought down to 2000 levels, openly acknowledged it would kill jobs.For more information about the bill's recklessness (and zaniness), please see the following National Review piece by Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute: "Surrender Monkeys in The Senate: Senate Republicans follow the French president’s lead on global warming" (ACU-13).
Voted AGAINST a Constitu- tional safeguard for Campaign-Finance Reform (s. 27, roll call 59) According to the ACU, the amendment would have ensured “that if one of several specific provisions in the underlying bill, mainly the ban on soft money, disclosure requirements for issue-group advertising, and hard money limits, [were] found to be an unconstitutional infringement of the First Amendment, then the other provisions specified would also be invalid.
Voted AGAINST changing senate rules to make it harder to increase spending from one year to the next (ACU- 14).
Voted FOR allowing illegal aliens to claim social security credit for work done prior to receiving a social-security number (ACU-14).
Voted FOR a 2006 amnesty bill for illegal aliens. As the ACU explains, this precursor to the amnesty bill of 2007 was a bill "overhauling U.S. immigration laws and offering a path to citizenship for most illegal immigrants in the country." This bill was spun as a "guest worker program" (ACU-14).
Voted AGAINST a border fence that, according to the ACU, would have provided for "the construction of 370 miles of double- layered fencing and at least 461 miles of vehicle barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border" (ACU-14).
Voted FOR the Dems' 2007 Energy Policy, which imposed draconian new regulations on the energy sector. As the ACU explains, these measures included "a rise in automobile mileage to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, a ban on the incandescent light bulb, new energy efficiency mandates for appliances, the use of 15 billion gallons of biofuels by 2015, and the taxpayer subsidy of new energy technologies" (ACU- 15)
Voted FOR extending Social Security benefits to illegal aliens(ACU-15).
Voted FOR a 2008 mortgage bailout scheme that, according to the ACU, “would further nationalize the mortgage industry, raise limits on some risky loans, and [add] another $4 billion grant program to be handed out by local governments” (ACU-16)
Voted AGAINST 2008 earmark reform that would have imposed a one-year moratorium on all pork-barrel earmarks.After the moratorium expired, the reform would have continued to make these ear-marks more difficult to pass(ACU-16)
Voted AGAINST an anti- military-bias measure that would have transferred funds from the city of Berkley to the Marine Corps.As the ACU explains, this measure would have done away with"earmarked taxpayer spending for the city of Berkeley, Calif., after the City Council denounced the Marine Corps and encouraged protestors to stop recruitment. Funds saved would have been transferred to the Marine Corps" (ACU-16). Not even Olympia Snowe voted against this measure!
Voted AGAINST Eminent Domain protections that, according to the ACU, "would have prohibited federal, state and local governments from using eminent domain to take farmland or grazing land and use it for parks, open space or similar purposes" (ACU-15).
Voted FOR the amnesty bill of 2007 by means of his cloture vote (ACU-15). Here's a reminder as to why, in spring of '07, conservatives flooded the senate with phone calls, practically shutting the lines down: 1. At Kennedy and McCain's bidding, the Senatetried to advance this bill through the dark of night, using the same methods the current congress has employed for the stimulus and health care packages.The below interview, in which Hannity debates Ohio's Voinovich, perfectly encapsulates the head-butting context of conservatives vs. RINOs at this key juncture in the party's decline. For the record--the only reason Voinovich isn't listed as one of our featured RINOs is that he doesn't plan to seek another term.

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